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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Trouble on Tycho by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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"Isobar Jones’ first call of the day was from Dome Commander Colonel Eagon telling him to deliver his weather reports to Riley Sparks, the Terra contact, ASAP. He works diligently but is soon called again, this time by Eagon’s niece who wants to know about the weather in a certain sector. Shyly, he answers then quickly finished his work. Sparks calls him and asks him to bring his reports to him, as well as informing him that Roberts and Browns were sent Outside for repair work. Sparks makes fun of Isobar’s bagpipes. \nIn Sparks’ office, Isobar delivers his work then waits for him to make the call. Once he’s delivered the report, Sparks asks the Earthman to turn his microphone around. As he does so, the video changes from his face to that of Earth, beautiful trees, and green grass. Isobar is grateful to Sparks and tells him so. They talk about Isobar’s homesickness until Colonel Eagon walks in to hear them discussing the Outisde. He quickly shuts it down and informs Isobar that it is now forbidden for him to play his bagpipe, due to the horrendous noise. Beyond frustrated, Isobar runs back to his rooms, grabs his bagpipes, and sneaks his way Outside by tricking the patrolman. Once he’s breathing in the thin air, he calms down and makes his way two miles out from the gate. Suddenly, he hears the sound of a gun and is brought back to reality. Roberts and Brown rush into view, both injured but grateful to see him, thinking he answered their distress call. However, he didn’t bring an armored tank with him, only a pair of bagpipes. A dozen Granniebacks run behind them, so Isobar helps Roberts and Brown climb a tree to escape. \nThe Grannies are unable to climb trees due to their significant size, but they can tear it down. As they pull and heave on the trunk, Isobar has the idea to play his bagpipes so the Dome will hear it and come looking for them. Roberts thinks it’s a good idea, so he begins to play, and slowly the Grannies all relax and lay down on the ground. They’re all amazed, but when Isobar stops playing, one of the Grannies starts to move again. He plays his entire repertoire and more before the armored tank arrives. The men from the dome reveal that the Grannies are dead, and the sound of the bagpipes must be what killed them. Isobar saved the team. \n",
"Horatio \"Isobar\" Jones lives and works in the Experimental Dome at Lunar III, a frontier outpost functioning as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point, and meteorological base on Luna, Earth's moon. As a meteorologist forecasting weather for Earth, Isobar owes daily weather reports to Dome Commander Colonel Eagan, whose niece he also advises on forecasts for her personal travels. Isobar receives a call from his associate \"Sparks\" Riley, who manages communications with Earth in the Dome's transmission turret. Isobar tells \"Sparks\" he is about to bring him the report, and \"Sparks\" implores him to leave behind his bagpipe, the only item that brings Isobar any joy in the Dome. He also informs Isobar that the maintenance men Roberts and Brown have gone Outside to make foundation repairs to the Dome. Isobar gets jealous when he hears this, and when \"Sparks\" makes his call to Earth, Isobar asks him to request the Earth radioman to twist his mike so he can get a glimpse of Earth's nature that he misses so much. When Commander Eagan enters the room, he informs Isobar that he must stop playing his bagpipe, as the sounds travel through the air-conditioning system and disturb the other workers. Indignant, Isobar says he will go Outside the Dome, which is forbidden due to the existence of the Granitebacks, called \"Grannies\"--a fast-moving native species with impenetrable, protective carapaces known to kill humans. Eagan doubles down on his commands, and an angry Isobar returns to his quarters. In his absence, \"Sparks\" converses with Dr. Loesch, who diagnoses Isobar with \"weltschmertz\"--a deep world-weariness that makes the sufferer resort to radical acts in order to feel happiness. At the same time, Isobar takes his bagpipes, tricks the Junior Patrolman attending to the impervite gates, and goes outside to feel the sunlight on his face, breathe fresh air, and play his bagpipes in peace. Outside, Isobar walks several miles away from the entrance to the Dome, where he stumbles upon Roberts and Brown, who are injured and running away from a hostile group of Grannies. Because no weapons can pierce the thick carapaces of the Grannies, the men scurry up a nearby tree adjacent to \"Sparks'\" transmission turret. When the Grannies begin attacking the tree, the men believe they will die; however, Isobar decides to play his bagpipes, hoping the music will alert \"Sparks\" to their dilemma by way of the air-conditioning vent. As Isobar plays, the men notice the Grannies seem to be entranced by the music. Isobar continues to play until help arrives, and they all realize the music has actually killed the Grannies.",
"Horatio Jones, known as Isobar, is ready to report the weather to the Dome Commander, Colonel Eagen. Isobar is stationed on the moon at Lunar III. His job involves reporting the weather forecasts for Earth. When he signed up to be part of the Frontier Service, he expected an exciting adventure, but his life for the last six months has been boring. Isobar especially hates the stale air that he must breathe every day. \n\nWhen Isobar’s coworker Riley makes contact with Earth’s radioman, Isobar hangs around and begs him to ask the operator for a glimpse of Earth. He obliges. The grass, birds, and flowers make Isobar even more homesick. Riley says that there’s plenty of foliage to look at outside on the moon, but Isobar complains that he isn’t allowed to venture Outside. It’s too dangerous to leave the station because the Granitebacks, also known as Grannies, are ready to attack at any moment. In fact, Brown and Roberts are currently risking their lives to make repairs to the building. The Grannies are creatures that appear to be made of rock. They are not very intelligent, but they have exoskeletons harder than diamonds, and their speed allows them to take down humans in a matter of seconds.\n\nIsobar’s only pleasure is playing his bagpipe, and he has been informed that all instruments are banned. Isobar offers to go Outside to play his bagpipes, but he’s reminded that no one is allowed to leave the station unless it’s absolutely necessary.\n\nRiley sees Isobar is angry,, and he gets a kick out of it. On the other hand, Dr. Loesch, an older physicist, feels sorry for Isobar. He argues that Isobar is suffering from weltschmertz, or weariness of the world. Some men with the condition commit suicide while others rebel in unforeseen ways. He’s right because Isobar is lying to the guard so that he can go Outside and play his bagpipes.\n\nIsobar feels the warm air, and he is instantly happy. A short time later, he hears a pistol go off, and he sees Roberts and Brown. They believe he has received their calls for help, but that isn’t the case. The men are being chased by a dozen Grannies, and Isobar instructs them to climb up a tree. The group of Grannies begin to hurl their bodies at the tree like a battering ram. The three men believe they are about to die. Isobar decides to play his bagpipes to get his colleagues’ attention. As soon as the music begins, the Grannies stop attacking. Although the men believe the Grannies are deaf, they appear to be laying down on the ground, unmoving, to listen. Eventually, an armored tank comes to rescue the men, and Isobar passes out from playing the pipes so fervently. The Grannies, it turns out, were killed by the music\n",
"Horatio Jones (also called Isobar or Jonesy) is a meteorological forecaster at the Experimental Dome on Luna stationed within a hemispheric dome called Lunar III. He had spent six months there and would not get to go home for at least another six. It was a desolate place that only served as a rocket refueling station, transmission center, and meteorological base.\nIsobar is crunching the data to write a new weather report to be delivered to his colleagues Sparks and Riley to transmit to the station on Earth. After delivering the report, he lingers in the transmission tower, desperately wanting to get a peek at Earth during the video transmission of his work to Earth. The receiving person on Earth complies and turns the video feed around the room so that they get a view out of the window to the outdoors on Earth with green grass and people enjoying the day. \nIsobar reveals he longs to experience the flowers and trees again to his colleagues. There is a place that this can be done on Luna, in another adjacent hemispheric dome called “Outside” that contains a lush valley, but this is strictly forbidden other than absolute necessities for things like repairs due to extremely dangerous beasts called Granitebacks (Grannies). Dome Commander Eagan overhears Isobar’s admissions, becoming serious about how under no circumstances is he to go Outside or to play the bagpipes because the sound transmits to everyone through the air conditioning system. Seeing an opportunity for himself, Horatio suggests he go Outside to play his beloved bagpipes, citing that two of his colleagues (Brown and Roberts) are also Outside conducting orders. The Commander is steadfast in his decision and strictly forbids Isobar from going outside.\nHoratio returns to his room and immediately takes the bagpipes and goes Outside by convincing the patrol guard there were orders for him to take his post while he reports to general headquarters. He is enthralled by the lush life in the hemisphere, and wanders a great distance from the gates until he is underneath of Sparks’ radio turret and hears the loud firing of a Haemholtz ray pistol. Brown and Roberts are being attacked by a group of Grannies, and have radioed the Dome for help with no response. Isobar is helpless to assist other than suggesting they all climb a tree. To their luck, the Grannies can’t climb, but they start ramming the tree until it is obvious that they will all die up there soon once they knock it over and devour them. \nIsobar starts playing the bagpipes to alert the attention of Sparks in the tower above them. He is successful in getting the attention of Sparks who comes with a tank to rescue them, but even more amazingly the bagpipe music has killed all the of the Grannies at the base of the tree. Isobar saves the day with the bagpipe music everyone in the Dome hates.\n"
] |
62260
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TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
|
Describe the Grannies, or Granitebacks.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Trouble on Tycho by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
Question:
Describe the Grannies, or Granitebacks.
Answer:
|
[
"Granitebacks are huge creatures that live on Luna III. Their immense size, hulking form, and impenetrable body make them practically indestructible. As of the beginning of this story, no Grannie had ever been killed. It was also believed that they were unable to hear, lacking ear canals, and potentially intelligence. Their exoskeleton or carapace was impenetrable, even harder than diamond or steel. Each weapon the Earthman devised to use against the Grannies failed. However, at the end of the story, it’s revealed that Grannies can, in fact, hear and are deeply affected by the sounds of the bagpipe. Isobar’s playing kills them all within 10 minutes and allows him and his companions to escape safe and sound. ",
"The Granitebacks, colloquially referred to as the \"Grannies\", are the only mobile form of life found on Luna, and were named by the first explorers of the moon. Although the Grannies have low intelligence, they are a deadly threat to humans. They move fast for their size and weight, and their bodies are covered with impervious exoskeletons impenetrable even by humans' most sophisticated technologies. Isobar does not fear them because they haven't been seen around the Dome in quite a long time. However, when Roberts and Brown run afoul of a hostile group of them during a routine maintenance run Outside, they take shelter with Isobar up a tree, knowing that none of their weapons can defend against the Grannies. The Grannies attack as a group, throwing their hard bodies against the tree, which bends and dents upon impact. When Isobar plays his bagpipes, the men learn that Grannies can be lulled and ultimately killed by the sounds emitted from that instrument. ",
"The Grannies, also known as Granitebacks, are mobile creatures that live on the moon, and they are highly dangerous to humans. The people working at Lunar III are not allowed to venture Outside because the Grannies will attack with little notice or reason. They are described as rocks on legs, which is where their moniker came from. The Grannies are not highly intelligent creatures, but intelligence isn’t necessary when they have exoskeletons made of incredibly strong material that can’t be wounded by steel or fire. Their exteriors are stronger than diamonds, steel, or any other known material to humans. Due to their immense weight, the Grannies cannot climb trees, so Isobar’s plan to climb to avoid them is a great move. However, the creatures work in packs, and about a dozen of them begin hurling their bodies at the tree at the same time, and this breaks the tree’s trunk. The men believe that the Grannies are deaf, but that turns out to be incorrect information. So far, the humans have not found a single weapon that works to fight against the Grannies. Isobar’s discovery that the music he creates with the bagpipes actually kills the Grannies is literally lifesaving. ",
"The Granitebacks (Grannies) are deadly beasts of low intelligence - the only life form found on Luna - so named because they are indestructibly impervious to human weapons. Their biology is a mystery to science because one has never been killed so it can be studied in a laboratory. All that is known is that their outer shell is harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate. \nOne weakness of the Grannies is that they are unable to climb, which is how Isobar, Roberts and Brown escape their land attack by climbing a tree in the Outside dome. However, the Grannies are exceptionally strong, capable of uprooting a tree large enough to hold three adult men. Ultimately, the thing that kills Grannies is bagpipe music, which causes them to lay down and die.\n"
] |
62260
|
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
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What is the significance of the bagpipes?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Trouble on Tycho by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
Question:
What is the significance of the bagpipes?
Answer:
|
[
"The bagpipes are Isobar’s one relief and a reminder of home. Isobar Jones hates his new job and position on Luna III and plays the bagpipes as a form of therapy. When they are taken away from him, he quickly revolts and rushes Outside to play once more. \nThough the bagpipes are initially only significant to Isobar, they quickly become the savior of the whole story. After Roberts and Brown run into Isobar, followed by Grannies, they climb a tree and hope for the best. Isobar plays the bagpipes as a way to alert those in the dome that they are outside, seeing as the air conditioning valve was near. However, as it turns out, the Grannies are able to hear, and the sound of the bagpipes slowly but surely killed them. The bagpipes saved Isobar’s life in multiple ways, as well as that of Roberts and Brown. They also proved to be a scientific breakthrough, as they are the only thing to ever kill a Grannie. \n",
"The bagpipes are Isobar's most cherished possession. Six months into his one-year term at Lunar III, Isobar begins to experience extreme homesickness, and he begins to loathe the artificial air-conditioning of the Experimental Dome as well as the rule against going Outside because of the threat of the \"Grannies.\" To keep himself sane, Isobar plays the bagpipes. However, the loud sound disturbs the other workers in the organization, and soon Commander Eagan orders Isobar to cease playing the bagpipes for the rest of his term. This causes Isobar to rebel, and he leaves the Dome against orders to play his bagpipes in peace. Once Outside, Isobar discovers Roberts and Brown are under attack by a group of Grannies, and he plays his bagpipes to try to alert \"Sparks\" that they are cornered up a tree. As a result of Isobar's music, the men discover the sound of the bagpipes not only calms the Grannies, but it also eventually kills them. Therefore, Isobar's insistence on playing the bagpipes leads to the discovery of a solid defense against the humans' primary threat on Luna.",
"Isobar is miserable while stationed at the Lunar III, and playing his bagpipes is the only pastime he has that he truly enjoys. He has been part of the Frontier Service for six months, and he regrets leaving Earth and the beautiful landscape to sit in a bubble day after day and breathe recycled air. His colleagues hate his music, and it’s difficult to stop the sounds from emanating all over the station because of the air conditioning vents. When he refuses to stop playing on multiple occasions, his Dome Commander institutes General Order 17, which is a ban on all musical instruments. Isobar does not take this news very well. He can’t suppress his anger at this news after being disappointed and depressed for a long stretch of time. Isobar argues that he should be able to go Outside and play, but of course that’s off-limits. The Grannies would almost surely attack him, and he’s forbidden from leaving unless it’s absolutely necessary. Isobar decides to ignore the rules because playing the bagpipes is what truly makes him happy. He tells the guard that’s working at the door to the Outside that he’s been sent to take his place. Instead of watching for Roberts and Brown, however, he slips outside with his pipes. After he sees his colleagues being attacked by the Grannies, he completely forgets about his instrument, but it’s a good thing that Roberts asks him about it, because the bagpipes actually save the trio’s lives. Isobar decides to play his instrument to alert his coworkers about the trouble he and Roberts and Brown are in, but by the time help arrives, they no longer need it. The Grannies are killed by the music, the one thing that all the humans hated with a passion. ",
"Isobar loves to play the bagpipes, but is discouraged by his colleagues, like when Sparks tells him not to bring them with the forecast he is delivering to him because of his sensitive eardrums. Doodlesack is the word his colleagues Riley and Sparks call the bagpipes to tease him. Later in the story, the Dome Commander Eagan actually cites a new rule he has made that practising musical instruments must be discontinued immediately by dome staff because the sound travels through the air conditioning system and annoys people. \nAfter Isobar smuggles the bagpipes Outside to play them and gets swept up in an near-death attack by the Grannies with Brown and Roberts that has them stuck up a tree waiting to die, his colleagues continue to tease him by saying they can’t even die in peace since he'll be playing the bagpipes.\nAlthough Isobar’s intention was to get help to come rescue them by playing the bagpipes and alerting Sparks in the nearby control tower to their danger with their loud sound, the story ends in an amazing twist instead. The bagpipe music is the only thing known to be capable of killing the Grannies. All the Grannies at the base of the tree layed down and died when the music was played, and Isobar’s hated musical instrument saves the day.\nMore than this, the Grannies are a barrier to humans being able to advance their colony on Luna, so Isobar’s discovery that the bagpipes are lethal might be an important key for progress.\n"
] |
62260
|
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
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Who is Isobar Jones and what happens to him throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Trouble on Tycho by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
Question:
Who is Isobar Jones and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Isobar Jones, real name Horatio, has been living on Luna III for six long months now. Working as a meteorologist for Earth and radio operator, he spends his days locked in the Experimental Dome of Luna meant to protect them from the Grannies, the indestructible creatures in the Outside. His only relief comes from playing his bagpipes, but his weariness, homesickness, and blues were catching up to him. \nAfter sending out his forecasts to Earth, Isobar reveals his deep desire to escape the dome and venture Outside. Caught by Colonel Eagon, he is punished by a new commandment stating that no musical instrument can be played as it disturbs the rest of the dome. An ardent player of the bagpipes, he is heartily disappointed and upset by the news. His weariness or weltschmertz as Dr. Loesch called it makes Isobar take his bagpipes Outside the dome so he can play in peace. He tricks the junior station manning the door and slips out once he’s out of sight. After walking for a long time through the beautiful scenery, he hears the sound of a gun firing. Knowing what this means, fear quickly strikes deep inside him. Roberts and Brown come towards him, followed by a dozen Grannies. Isobar helps them climb a tree while explaining that he doesn’t actually have the armored tank they called for. Once there, he explains his idea to them about playing his bagpipes so that the Dome would hear them and come to their rescue. The air conditioning valve was nearby, so the sound would carry. As he begins to play, the Grannies fall to the ground and remain there. Supposedly resting, Isobar keeps playing until backup arrives. They are shocked to find that Isobar’s playing didn’t just put the Grannies to sleep, it actually killed them. Isobar made a huge scientific discovery and rescued his companions. ",
"Horatio \"Isobar\" Jones is a meteorologist working a one-year term in the Experimental Dome at the Lunar III frontier outpost on Earth's moon, Luna. Isobar is lean and gangly and has a good working relationship with others at the outpost. However, Isobar has begun to miss Earth and the feeling of nature, since it is prohibited to leave the Dome due to the existential threat of the Grannies. He asks Sparks Riley to request the radioman show him the view outside when Sparks calls Earth to relay Isobar's weather report; when Sparks tells him Patrolmen Roberts and Brown have left the Dome to conduct routine maintenance Outside, Isobar feels jealous. He begins to loathe the recycled air in the dome and the clammy feeling it creates on his skin. Isobar becomes easily irritated and lashes out with profanities. Dr. Loesch suggests to Sparks that Isobar is the victim of \"weltschmertz\", an intense kind of world-weariness that can drive a person to extreme measures to feel happiness again. The only activity that brings Isobar joy anymore is playing the bagpipes, which disturbs his co-workers so much that Commander Eagan eventually orders him to stop playing it. This command sends Isobar over the edge, and he tricks Junior Patrolman Wilkins into giving up his post at the entrance gate so that he can leave the Dome and go outside to get some fresh air and play his bagpipes in peace. While he is outside, Isobar runs into Roberts and Brown, who are running away from a group of Grannies. After they take refuge up a tree, Isobar plays his bagpipes in order to signal Sparks for help. In the process, he learns that the music of the bagpipes has a powerful sedative effect upon the Grannies--so much so that it actually kills them.",
"Isobar Jones’s real name is Horatio. He joined the Frontier Services six months ago because he was eager to go on an adventure on the moon and do something exciting with his life. He is deeply disappointed in his decision because he gets very little joy out of his job. He enjoys making observations about the meteorological patterns on Earth, but he does not like the constant instructions from the Dome Commander. Most of all, he hates being trapped inside without fresh air and the familiar feeling of sunshine warming his skin. He brought his bagpipes to the Lunar III because playing music is one of his favorite hobbies, but his coworkers become annoyed with his incessant playing. There is nowhere for him to go and play that won’t bother others. The music travels through the air conditioning system, and it’s impossible to turn it off. After the Dome Commander receives several complaints, he decides to make a rule forbidding all instruments. Isobar is devastated. He was already feeling depressed and anxious, but prohibiting music is the final straw for him. He devises a plan to go Outside to play his bagpipes, which is strictly forbidden. He knows that there’s a real possibility that he will run into a Graniteback, but he assumes that he can run away from them quickly. After he tricks a guard into leaving his post, he moseys outside and travels two miles away from the gate to the building. There, he encounters Brown and Roberts, who both believe that Isobar has been sent to help them. Their calls to the station have gone unanswered, and they quickly realize that Isobar does not have an armored vehicle. He’s actually equipped with his bagpipes. Isobar’s idea to climb a nearby tree to escape a pack of Grannies buys the men time, and his next idea, to play his instrument to alert their colleagues that they're in need of help, actually saves their lives. Isobar does not intend to kill the Grannies with his music, but they fall to the ground and die after hearing him play. ",
"Isobar Jones (real name, Horatio Jones, also referred to in the story as Isobar or Jonesy) is a meteorological forecaster stationed on Luna. He has been there for six months, and is developing a kind of stir-craziness from the sterile living environment and being forbidden from his one true joy - playing the bagpipes. Dr. Loesch claims he has a sickness called weltschmertz, which is a dangerous mental condition of “world sickness” that can make a person do wild things.\nIsobar delivers a weather forecast to the transmission tower early in the story where he begs his colleague to have the Earth receiver person turn the video feed around to their window. This demonstrates how much Isobars longs for the outdoors that a video feed out a window on Earth soothes him. He is strictly forbidden from playing the bagpipes or from going “Outside” to the adjacent hemispheric dome that houses a lush valley by the Dome Commander Eagan. Being overcome with his desire for both the bagpipes and to go Outside, Isobar defies orders, tricks a guard into leaving his post, and sets into the lush Outside. It is deeply restorative for him, but he is snapped to reality when he discovers his colleagues, Brown and Roberts, are being attacked by Grannies. \nIsobar is helpless to assist them other than suggesting they all climb a tree. To their luck, the Grannies can’t climb, but they start ramming the tree until it is obvious that they will all die up there soon once they knock it over and devour them. Isobar starts playing the bagpipes to alert the attention of Sparks in the tower above them. He is successful in getting the attention of Sparks who comes with a tank to rescue them, but even more amazingly his bagpipe music has killed all the of the Grannies at the base of the tree. \nIsobar becomes the hero of the story, since his bagpipe music is the first thing known to be capable of killing the Grannies, which will allow humans to now study them and perhaps make advancements to their settlement on Luna. \n"
] |
62260
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TROUBLE ON TYCHO
By NELSON S. BOND
Isobar and his squeeze-pipes were the bane of the Moon Station's existence. But there came the day when his comrades found that the worth of a man lies sometimes in his nuisance value.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories March 1943. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The audiophone buzzed thrice—one long, followed by two shorts—and Isobar Jones pressed the stud activating its glowing scanner-disc.
"Hummm?" he said absent-mindedly.
The selenoplate glowed faintly, and the image of the Dome Commander appeared.
"Report ready, Jones?"
"Almost," acknowledged Isobar gloomily. "It prob'ly ain't right, though. How anybody can be expected to get anything right on this dagnabbed hunk o' green cheese—"
"Send it up," interrupted Colonel Eagan, "as soon as you can. Sparks is making Terra contact now. That is all."
"That ain't all!" declared Isobar indignantly. "How about my bag—?"
It was all , so far as the D.C. was concerned. Isobar was talking to himself. The plate dulled. Isobar said, "Nuts!" and returned to his duties. He jotted neat ditto marks under the word "Clear" which, six months ago, he had placed beneath the column headed: Cond. of Obs. He noted the proper figures under the headings Sun Spots : Max Freq. — Min. Freq. ; then he sketched careful curves in blue and red ink upon the Mercator projection of Earth which was his daily work sheet.
This done, he drew a clean sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, frowned thoughtfully at the tabulated results of his observations, and began writing.
" Weather forecast for Terra ," he wrote, his pen making scratching sounds.
The audiophone rasped again. Isobar jabbed the stud and answered without looking.
"O.Q.," he said wearily. "O.Q. I told you it would be ready in a couple o' minutes. Keep your pants on!"
"I—er—I beg your pardon, Isobar?" queried a mild voice.
Isobar started. His sallow cheeks achieved a sickly salmon hue. He blinked nervously.
"Oh, jumpin' jimminy!" he gulped. " You , Miss Sally! Golly—'scuse me! I didn't realize—"
The Dome Commander's niece giggled.
"That's all right, Isobar. I just called to ask you about the weather in Oceania Sector 4B next week. I've got a swimming date at Waikiki, but I won't make the shuttle unless the weather's going to be nice."
"It is," promised Isobar. "It'll be swell all weekend, Miss Sally. Fine sunshiny weather. You can go."
"That's wonderful. Thanks so much, Isobar."
"Don't mention it, ma'am," said Isobar, and returned to his work.
South America. Africa. Asia. Pan-Europa. Swiftly he outlined the meteorological prospects for each sector. He enjoyed this part of his job. As he wrote forecasts for each area, in his mind's eye he saw himself enjoying such pastimes as each geographical division's terrain rendered possible.
If home is where the heart is, Horatio Jones—known better as "Isobar" to his associates at the Experimental Dome on Luna—was a long, long way from home. His lean, gangling frame was immured, and had been for six tedious Earth months, beneath the impervite hemisphere of Lunar III—that frontier outpost which served as a rocket refueling station, teleradio transmission point and meteorological base.
"Six solid months! Six sad, dreary months!" thought Isobar, "Locked up in an airtight Dome like—like a goldfish in a glass bowl!" Sunlight? Oh, sure! But filtered through ultraviolet wave-traps so it could not burn, it left the skin pale and lustreless and clammy as the belly of a toad. Fresh air? Pooh! Nothing but that everlasting sickening, scented, reoxygenated stuff gushing from atmo-conditioning units.
Excitement? Adventure? The romance he had been led to expect when he signed on for frontier service? Bah! Only a weary, monotonous, routine existence.
"A pain!" declared Isobar Jones. "That's what it is; a pain in the stummick. Not even allowed to—Yeah?"
It was Sparks, audioing from the Dome's transmission turret. He said,
"Hyah, Jonesy! How comes with the report?"
"Done," said Isobar. "I was just gettin' the sheets together for you."
"O.Q. But just bring it . Nothing else."
Isobar bridled.
"I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Oh, no? Well, I'm talking about that squawk-filled doodlesack of yours, sonny boy. Don't bring that bag-full of noise up here with you."
Isobar said defiantly, "It ain't a doodlesack. It's a bagpipe. And I guess I can play it if I want to—"
"Not," said Sparks emphatically, "in my cubby! I've got sensitive eardrums. Well, stir your stumps! I've got to get the report rolling quick today. Big doings up here."
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, it's Roberts and Brown—"
"What about 'em?"
"They've gone Outside to make foundation repairs."
"Lucky stiffs!" commented Isobar ruefully.
"Lucky, no. Stiffs, maybe—if they should meet any Grannies. Well, scoot along. I'm on the ether in four point sixteen minutes."
"Be right up," promised Isobar, and, sheets in hand, he ambled from his cloistered cell toward the central section of the Dome.
He didn't leave Sparks' turret after the sheets were delivered. Instead, he hung around, fidgeting so obtrusively that Riley finally turned to him in sheer exasperation.
"Sweet snakes of Saturn, Jonesy, what's the trouble? Bugs in your britches?"
Isobar said, "H-huh? Oh, you mean—Oh, thanks, no! I just thought mebbe you wouldn't mind if I—well—er—"
"I get it!" Sparks grinned. "Want to play peekaboo while the contact's open, eh? Well, O.Q. Watch the birdie!"
He twisted dials, adjusted verniers, fingered a host of incomprehensible keys. Current hummed and howled. Then a plate before him cleared, and the voice of the Earth operator came in, enunciating with painstaking clarity:
"Earth answering Luna. Earth answering Luna's call. Can you hear me, Luna? Can you hear—?"
"I can not only hear you," snorted Riley, "I can see you and smell you, as well. Stop hamming it, stupid! You're lousing up the earth!"
The now-visible face of the Earth radioman drew into a grimace of displeasure.
"Oh, it's you ? Funny man, eh? Funny man Riley?"
"Sure," said Riley agreeably. "I'm a scream. Four-alarm Riley, the cosmic comedian—didn't you know? Flick on your dictacoder, oyster-puss; here's the weather report." He read it. "' Weather forecast for Terra, week of May 15-21 —'"
"Ask him," whispered Isobar eagerly. "Sparks, don't forget to ask him!"
Riley motioned for silence, but nodded. He finished the weather report, entered the Dome Commander's log upon the Home Office records, and dictated a short entry from the Luna Biological Commission. Then:
"That is all," he concluded.
"O.Q.," verified the other radioman. Isobar writhed anxiously, prodded Riley's shoulder.
"Ask him, Sparks! Go on ask him!"
"Oh, cut jets, will you?" snapped Sparks. The Terra operator looked startled.
"How's that? I didn't say a word—"
"Don't be a dope," said Sparks, "you dope! I wasn't talking to you. I'm entertaining a visitor, a refugee from a cuckoo clock. Look, do me a favor, chum? Can you twist your mike around so it's pointing out a window?"
"What? Why—why, yes, but—"
"Without buts," said Sparks grumpily. "Yours not to reason why; yours but to do or don't. Will you do it?"
"Well, sure. But I don't understand—" The silver platter which had mirrored the radioman's face clouded as the Earth operator twirled the inconoscope. Walls and desks of an ordinary broadcasting office spun briefly into view; then the plate reflected a glimpse of an Earthly landscape. Soft blue sky warmed by an atmosphere-shielded sun ... green trees firmly rooted in still-greener grass ... flowers ... birds ... people....
"Enough?" asked Sparks.
Isobar Jones awakened from his trance, eyes dulling. Reluctantly he nodded. Riley stared at him strangely, almost gently. To the other radioman, "O.Q., pal," he said. "Cut!"
"Cut!" agreed the other. The plate blanked out.
"Thanks, Sparks," said Isobar.
"Nothing," shrugged Riley " He twisted the mike; not me. But—how come you always want to take a squint at Earth when the circuit's open, Jonesy? Homesick?"
"Sort of," admitted Isobar guiltily.
"Well, hell, aren't we all? But we can't leave here for another six months at least. Not till our tricks are up. I should think it'd only make you feel worse to see Earth."
"It ain't Earth I'm homesick for," explained Isobar. "It's—well, it's the things that go with it. I mean things like grass and flowers and trees."
Sparks grinned; a mirthless, lopsided grin.
"We've got them right here on Luna. Go look out the tower window, Jonesy. The Dome's nestled smack in the middle of the prettiest, greenest little valley you ever saw."
"I know," complained Isobar. "And that's what makes it even worse. All that pretty, soft, green stuff Outside—and we ain't allowed to go out in it. Sometimes I get so mad I'd like to—"
"To," interrupted a crisp voice, "what?"
Isobar spun, flushing; his eyes dropped before those of Dome Commander Eagan. He squirmed.
"N-nothing, sir. I was only saying—"
"I heard you, Jones. And please let me hear no more of such talk, sir! It is strictly forbidden for anyone to go Outside except in cases of absolute necessity. Such labor as caused Patrolmen Brown and Roberts to go, for example—"
"Any word from them yet, sir?" asked Sparks eagerly.
"Not yet. But we're expecting them to return at any minute now. Jones! Where are you going?"
"Why—why, just back to my quarters, sir."
"That's what I thought. And what did you plan to do there?"
Isobar said stubbornly, "Well, I sort of figured I'd amuse myself for a while—"
"I thought that, too. And with what , pray, Jones?"
"With the only dratted thing," said Isobar, suddenly petulant, "that gives me any fun around this dagnabbed place! With my bagpipe."
Commander Eagan said, "You'd better find some new way of amusing yourself, Jones. Have you read General Order 17?"
Isobar said, "I seen it. But if you think—"
"It says," stated Eagan deliberately, "' In order that work or rest periods of the Dome's staff may not be disturbed, it is hereby ordered that the playing or practicing of all or any musical instruments must be discontinued immediately. By order of the Dome Commander ,' That means you, Jones!"
"But, dingbust it!" keened Isobar, "it don't disturb nobody for me to play my bagpipes! I know these lunks around here don't appreciate good music, so I always go in my office and lock the door after me—"
"But the Dome," pointed out Commander Eagan, "has an air-conditioning system which can't be shut off. The ungodly moans of your—er—so-called musical instrument can be heard through the entire structure."
He suddenly seemed to gain stature.
"No, Jones, this order is final! You cannot disrupt our entire organization for your own—er—amusement."
"But—" said Isobar.
"No!"
Isobar wriggled desperately. Life on Luna was sorry enough already. If now they took from him the last remaining solace he had, the last amusement which lightened his moments of freedom—
"Look, Commander!" he pleaded, "I tell you what I'll do. I won't bother nobody. I'll go Outside and play it—"
"Outside!" Eagan stared at him incredulously. "Are you mad? How about the Grannies?"
Isobar knew all about the Grannies. The only mobile form of life found by space-questing man on Earth's satellite, their name was an abbreviation of the descriptive one applied to them by the first Lunar exployers: Granitebacks. This was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. For the Grannies, though possessed of certain low intelligence, had quickly proven themselves a deadly, unyielding and implacable foe.
Worse yet, they were an enemy almost indestructible! No man had ever yet brought to Earth laboratories the carcass of a Grannie; science was completely baffled in its endeavors to explain the composition of Graniteback physiology—but it was known, from bitter experience, that the carapace or exoskeleton of the Grannies was formed of something harder than steel, diamond, or battleplate! This flesh could be penetrated by no weapon known to man; neither by steel nor flame, by electronic nor ionic wave, nor by the lethal, newly discovered atomo-needle dispenser.
All this Isobar knew about the Grannies. Yet:
"They ain't been any Grannies seen around the Dome," he said, "for a 'coon's age. Anyhow, if I seen any comin', I could run right back inside—"
"No!" said Commander Eagan flatly. "Absolutely, no ! I have no time for such nonsense. You know the orders—obey them! And now, gentlemen, good afternoon!"
He left. Sparks turned to Isobar, grinning.
"Well," he said, "one man's fish—hey, Jonesy? Too bad you can't play your doodlesack any more, but frankly, I'm just as glad. Of all the awful screeching wails—"
But Isobar Jones, generally mild and gentle, was now in a perfect fury. His pale eyes blazed, he stomped his foot on the floor, and from his lips poured a stream of such angry invective that Riley looked startled. Words that, to Isobar, were the utter dregs of violent profanity.
"Oh, dagnab it!" fumed Isobar Jones. "Oh, tarnation and dingbust! Oh— fiddlesticks !"
II
"And so," chuckled Riley, "he left, bubbling like a kettle on a red-hot oven. But, boy! was he ever mad! Just about ready to bust, he was."
Some minutes had passed since Isobar had left; Riley was talking to Dr. Loesch, head of the Dome's Physics Research Division. The older man nodded commiseratingly.
"It is funny, yes," he agreed, "but at the same time it is not altogether amusing. I feel sorry for him. He is a very unhappy man, our poor Isobar."
"Yeah, I know," said Riley, "but, hell, we all get a little bit homesick now and then. He ought to learn to—"
"Excuse me, my boy," interrupted the aged physicist, his voice gentle,
"it is not mere homesickness that troubles our friend. It is something deeper, much more vital and serious. It is what my people call: weltschmertz . There is no accurate translation in English. It means
'world sickness,' or better, 'world weariness'—something like that but intensified a thousandfold.
"It is a deeply-rooted mental condition, sometimes a dangerous frame of mind. Under its grip, men do wild things. Hating the world on which they find themselves, they rebel in curious ways. Suicide ... mad acts of valor ... deeds of cunning or knavery...."
"You mean," demanded Sparks anxiously, "Isobar ain't got all his buttons?"
"Not that exactly. He is perfectly sane. But he is in a dark morass of despair. He may try anything to retrieve his lost happiness, rid his soul of its dark oppression. His world-sickness is like a crying hunger—By the way, where is he now?"
"Below, I guess. In his quarters."
"Ah, good! Perhaps he is sleeping. Let us hope so. In slumber he will find peace and forgetfulness."
But Dr. Loesch would have been far less sanguine had some power the
"giftie gi'en" him of watching Isobar Jones at that moment.
Isobar was not asleep. Far from it. Wide awake and very much astir, he was acting in a singularly sinister role: that of a slinking, furtive culprit.
Returning to his private cubicle after his conversation with Dome Commander Eagan, he had stalked straightway to the cabinet wherein was encased his precious set of bagpipes. These he had taken from their pegs, gazed upon defiantly, and fondled with almost parental affection.
"So I can't play you, huh?" he muttered darkly. "It disturbs the peace o' the dingfounded, dumblasted Dome staff, does it? Well, we'll see about that!"
And tucking the bag under his arm, he had cautiously slipped from the room, down little-used corridors, and now he stood before the huge impervite gates which were the entrance to the Dome and the doorway to Outside.
On all save those occasions when a spacecraft landed in the cradle adjacent the gateway, these portals were doubly locked and barred. But today they had been unbolted that the two maintenance men might venture out. And since it was quite possible that Brown and Roberts might have to get inside in a hurry, their bolts remained drawn. Sole guardian of the entrance was a very bored Junior Patrolman.
Up to this worthy strode Isobar Jones, confident and assured, exuding an aura of propriety.
"Very well, Wilkins," he said. "I'll take over now. You may go to the meeting."
Wilkins looked at him bewilderedly.
"Huh? Whuzzat, Mr. Jones?"
Isobar's eyebrows arched.
"You mean you haven't been notified?"
"Notified of what ?"
"Why, the general council of all Patrolmen! Weren't you told that I would take your place here while you reported to G.H.Q.?"
"I ain't," puzzled Wilkins, "heard nothing about it. Maybe I ought to call the office, maybe?"
And he moved the wall-audio. But Isobar said swiftly. "That—er—won't be necessary, Wilkins. My orders were plain enough. Now, you just run along. I'll watch this entrance for you."
"We-e-ell," said Wilkins, "if you say so. Orders is orders. But keep a sharp eye out, Mister Jones, in case Roberts and Brown should come back sudden-like."
"I will," promised Isobar, "don't worry."
Wilkins moved away. Isobar waited until the Patrolman was completely out of sight. Then swiftly he pulled open the massive gate, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
A flood of warmth, exhilarating after the constantly regulated temperature of the Dome, descended upon him. Fresh air, thin, but fragrant with the scent of growing things, made his pulses stir with joyous abandon. He was Outside! He was Outside, in good sunlight, at last! After six long and dreary months!
Raptly, blissfully, all thought of caution tossed to the gentle breezes that ruffled his sparse hair, Isobar Jones stepped forward into the lunar valley....
How long he wandered thus, carefree and utterly content, he could not afterward say. It seemed like minutes; it must have been longer. He only knew that the grass was green beneath his feet, the trees were a lacy network through which warm sunlight filtered benevolently, the chirrupings of small insects and the rustling whisper of the breezes formed a tiny symphony of happiness through which he moved as one charmed.
It did not occur to him that he had wandered too far from the Dome's entrance until, strolling through an enchanting flower-decked glade, he was startled to hear—off to his right—the sharp, explosive bark of a Haemholtz ray pistol.
He whirled, staring about him wildly, and discovered that though his meandering had kept him near the Dome, he had unconsciously followed its hemispherical perimeter to a point nearly two miles from the Gateway. By the placement of ports and windows, Isobar was able to judge his location perfectly; he was opposite that portion of the structure which housed Sparks' radio turret.
And the shooting? That could only be—
He did not have to name its reason, even to himself. For at that moment, there came racing around the curve of the Dome a pair of figures, Patrolmen clad in fatigue drab. Roberts and Brown. Roberts was staggering, one foot dragged awkwardly as he ran; Brown's left arm, bloodstained from shoulder to elbow, hung limply at his side, but in his good right fist he held a spitting Haemholtz with which he tried to cover his comrade's sluggish retreat.
And behind these two, grim, grey, gaunt figures that moved with astonishing speed despite their massive bulk, came three ... six ... a dozen of those lunarites whom all men feared. The Grannies!
III
Simultaneously with his recognition of the pair, Joe Roberts saw him. A gasp of relief escaped the wounded man.
"Jones! Thank the Lord! Then you picked up our cry for help? Quick, man—where is it? Theres not a moment to waste!"
"W-where," faltered Isobar feebly, "is what ?"
"The tank, of course! Didn't you hear our telecast? We can't possibly make it back to the gate without an armored car. My foot's broken, and—" Roberts stopped suddenly, an abrupt horror in his eyes. "You don't have one! You're here alone ! Then you didn't pick up our call? But, why—?"
"Never mind that," snapped Isobar, "now!" Placid by nature, he could move when urgency drove. His quick mind saw the immediateness of their peril. Unarmed, he could not help the Patrolmen fight a delaying action against their foes, nor could he hasten their retreat. Anyway, weapons were useless, and time was of the essence. There was but one temporary way of staving off disaster. "Over here ... this tree! Quick! Up you go! Give him a lift, Brown—There! That's the stuff!"
He was the last to scramble up the gnarled bole to a tentative leafy sanctuary. He had barely gained the security of the lowermost bough when a thundering crash resounded, the sturdy trunk trembled beneath his clutch. Stony claws gouged yellow parallels in the bark scant inches beneath one kicking foot, then the Granny fell back with a thud. The Graniteback was not a climber. It was far too ungainly, much too weighty for that.
Roberts said weakly, "Th-thanks, Jonesy! That was a close call."
"That goes for me, too, Jonesy," added Brown from an upper bough.
"But I'm afraid you just delayed matters. This tree's O.Q. as long as it lasts, but—" He stared down upon the gathering knot of Grannies unhappily—"it's not going to last long with that bunch of superdreadnaughts working out on it! Hold tight, fellows! Here they come!"
For the Grannies, who had huddled for a moment as if in telepathic consultation, now joined forces, turned, and as one body charged headlong toward the tree. The unified force of their attack was like the shattering impact of a battering ram. Bark rasped and gritted beneath the besieged men's hands, dry leaves and twigs pelted about them in a tiny rain, tormented fibrous sinews groaned as the aged forest monarch shuddered in agony.
Desperately they clung to their perches. Though the great tree bent, it did not break. But when it stopped trembling, it was canted drunkenly to one side, and the erstwhile solid earth about its base was broken and cracked—revealing fleshy tentacles uprooted from ancient moorings!
Brown stared at this evidence of the Grannies' power with terror-fascinated eyes. His voice was none too firm.
"Lord! Piledrivers! A couple more like that—"
Isobar nodded. He knew what falling into the clutch of the Grannies meant. He had once seen the grisly aftermath of a Graniteback feast. Even now their adversaries had drawn back for a second attack. A sudden idea struck him. A straw of hope at which he grasped feverishly.
"You telecast a message to the Dome? Help should be on the way by now. If we can just hold out—"
But Roberts shook his head.
"We sent a message, Jonesy, but I don't think it got through. I've just been looking at my portable. It seems to be busted. Happened when they first attacked us, I guess. I tripped and fell on it."
Isobar's last hope flickered out.
"Then I—I guess it won't be long now," he mourned. "If we could have only got a message through, they would have sent out an armored car to pick us up. But as it is—"
Brown's shrug displayed a bravado he did not feel.
"Well, that's the way it goes. We knew what we were risking when we volunteered to come Outside. This damn moon! It'll never be worth a plugged credit until men find some way to fight those murderous stones-on-legs!"
Roberts said, "That's right. But what are you doing out here, Isobar? And why, for Pete's sake, the bagpipes?"
"Oh—the pipes?" Isobar flushed painfully. He had almost forgotten his original reason for adventuring Outside, had quite forgotten his instrument, and was now rather amazed to discover that somehow throughout all the excitement he had held onto it. "Why, I just happened to—Oh! the pipes! "
"Hold on!" roared Roberts. His warning came just in time. Once more, the three tree-sitters shook like dried peas in a pod as their leafy refuge trembled before the locomotive onslaught of the lunar beasts. This time the already-exposed roots strained and lifted, several snapped; when the Grannies again withdrew, complacently unaware that the "lethal ray" of Brown's Haemholtz was wasting itself upon their adamant hides in futile fury, the tree was bent at a precarious angle.
Brown sobbed, not with fear but with impotent anger, and in a gesture of enraged desperation, hurled his now-empty weapon at the retreating Grannies.
"No good! Not a damn bit of good! Oh, if there was only some way of fighting those filthy things—"
But Isobar Jones had a one-track mind. "The pipes!" he cried again, excitedly. "That's the answer!" And he drew the instrument into playing position, bag cuddled beneath one arm-pit, drones stiffly erect over his shoulder, blow-pipe at his lips. His cheeks puffed, his breath expelled. The giant lung swelled, the chaunter emitted its distinctive, fearsome, " Kaa-aa-o-o-o-oro-oong! "
Roberts moaned.
"Oh, Lord! A guy can't even die in peace!"
And Brown stared at him hopelessly.
"It's no use, Isobar. You trying to scare them off? They have no sense of hearing. That's been proven—"
Isobar took his lips from the reed to explain.
"It's not that. I'm trying to rouse the boys in the Dome. We're right opposite the atmosphere-conditioning-unit. See that grilled duct over there? That's an inhalation-vent. The portable transmitter's out of order, and our voices ain't strong enough to carry into the Dome—but the sound of these pipes is! And Commander Eagan told me just a short while ago that the sound of the pipes carries all over the building!
"If they hear this, they'll get mad because I'm disobeyin' orders. They'll start lookin' for me. If they can't find me inside, maybe they'll look Outside. See that window? That's Sparks' turret. If we can make him look out here—"
" Stop talking! " roared Roberts. "Stop talking, guy, and start blowing! I think you've got something there. Anyhow, it's our last hope. Blow! "
"And quick!" appended Brown. "For here they come!"
Isobar played, blew with all his might, while the Grannies raged below.
He meant the Grannies. Again they were huddling for attack, once more, a solid phalanx of indestructible, granite flesh, they were smashing down upon the tree.
" Haa-a-roong! " blew Isobar Jones.
IV
And—even he could not have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies' rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye , the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North , he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
"Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they'll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!"
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks' familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar's fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
"After you? Those Grannies? Hell's howling acres— those Grannies are stone dead !"
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Describe John Smith and his instrument.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Holes and John Smith by Edward W. Ludwig.
Relevant chunks:
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
Question:
Describe John Smith and his instrument.
Answer:
|
[
"John Smith is a human from Earth that is described as a very shot guy with a broad face and light blue eyes. He works with the Marsport union. When he enters the Space Room establishment, he is dressed in a tight black suit and is carrying his instrument, the Zloomph. John states that the Zloomph that he carries is an instrument that is over five thousand years old. He excitedly states that he found it in a pawn shop and that it’s the only one in existence. \n\nThe Zloomph itself is described as being incredibly large, and very black. The tones that emitted from it were jazz-like and received well by the band, the audience, and The Goon. \n",
"John’s instrument is large, black, and old. It is taller and wider than a normal bass fiddle. It’s shape is odd, looking like a black hour-glass. It has black, mirror-like wood. The music coming out of this instrument is beautiful. It is heavenly with depth, volume and richness. John calls it a Zloomph and mentions its uniqueness. John Smith is a little man, he is described as a matchstick. His face is flat and broad. He has sandcolored hair that is quite messy, long and dry. His blue eyes are watery. He wears a black color tightfitting suit. He is between twenty and forty. He speaks quickly. He does not like Venusian fizz and wine-syrup, but enjoys beer. He has a dreamy expression when playing music on his instrument. John is always noticing holes that seems common to everyone else. He does not care much about playing music, instead he likes to study ancient history and he needs to finish his plan, which is finding the correct hole. Because he needs to go back to his world to prove a theory. ",
"John Smith is a bass fiddle, he is huge and looks like a monster, he looks disgusting. His instrument is over five thousand years, it's a Zloomph with a matchstick as old. The man has pale blue eyes and his age is indeterminable. He is silent almost all the time, but he loves beer, and it makes him talk. He mostly talks about the holes, as he is desperately seeking for the trans-dimensional one to get back to his time dimension. All the time he makes plans about it, also he is interested in history and proving theories about it. He is a great player, who makes everyone around listen with admiration and full attention, but music isn't his main passion. ",
"John Smith is physically described as a little guy similar to an animated matchstick. He has a flat, broad face that seems to have been compressed in a vice. His mop of hair is sand-colored, and Jimmie is reminded of a field of dry grass with strands that form loops to the side of his face. He also has pale, watery blue eyes and wears a tight-fitting black suit. Jimmie says it is impossible to guess his age as he could be anywhere between twenty and forty. When John speaks, it is shrill and rapid. However, when he talks about the holes and his ancient history theories, he becomes much more enthusiastic and lights up. Other than those times, he is quite silent and has sad eyes. The others find him eccentric, but they want to keep him around because of his bass-playing abilities. His instrument is called a Zloomph. It is an enormous black monstrosity, and Jimmie thinks it came from a pawnbroker’s attic. It is a queerly-shaped bass fiddle. It is also too tall and too wide. John says the Zloomph is over five thousand years old and is the only one in existence. It can play any song, and the sound that comes out of it is the whole chord instead of just a single note. When Jimmie listens to it, he feels his blood tingling with each plucked note. "
] |
32667
|
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Holes and John Smith by Edward W. Ludwig.
Relevant chunks:
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The setting is primarily at an event space called the Space Room. Jimmie Stanley and his band perform there. They are sitting in the cocktail lounge waiting for the replacement for their fiddle player to arrive. Their boss, Ke-teeli, is upset that the fiddle player is not yet there. He is threatening to not let them play at the venue anymore. Eventually, their replacement player arrives at the venue. However, Jimmie has serious doubts that man will be able to play well because his instrument does not look like a fiddle and he appears disheveled. When the band does play with the new member, John Smith, he and his instrument – the Zloomph – sounds amazing. The audience shows a good reception as does the boss. \n\nJimmie wants John to join the band, but John has other concerns. He continuously mentions holes and seems obsessed over finding holes. Eventually, Jimmie learns why John is interested in holes. John claims that he accidentally went through a hole and left his time dimension. He is in search of holes in order to find his original time dimension. Jimmie attempts to play along with John’s claims and even offers to let John stay at his apartment in order to entice him to join the band. John continues to drink beer and talk about holes during the story. \n\nOne night, Jimmie returns back to his apartment and finds John drunk on the floor. He takes John, and the instrument, outside to calm John down. When they go outside, John and his instrument fall through a hole and are not seen again. Jimmie and the rest of the band assume that John managed to find his way back to his own time zone. \n",
"Jimmie Stanley is the piano player in a band, and the story begins at The Space Room where the band is waiting for a temporary bass fiddle man to arrive. This is because the original bass fiddle man, Ziggy, injured his fingers. The boss Ke-teeli does not seem to like their music that much. Now that a member is missing and the replacement player has not yet arrived, the boss starts to doubt that the three members of the band can perform good music. He doesn’t think that the customers will be satisfied. The band’s contract with the boss ends this week, and the boss does not seem to want to continue the contract. Finally, the temporary bass fiddle player arrives with his instrument. He introduces himself as John Smith and tells them that he is late because he was working on his plan. At first, Jimmie doubt that the ancient bass fiddle can make any beautiful sound. But he becomes very surprised once he hears the beautiful music. The audiences are focused and intrigued by the music. Even the boss becomes delight after hearing the music. Later, John begins to notice the holes on the clarinet and the piano, which seems quite odd to the band. Noting his talents in music and the facial expression on the boss’ face, Jimmie asks John to play for the long term. But John rejects stating that he needs to work on his plan. John mentions that there are many holes in the universe, but he cannot find the right one to go back to prove a point to the University. Believing that Jimmie understands him, he decides to play with the band. The boss agrees to give them the contract if John stays. For the next few days, John becomes popular and then a reporter come to interview him. After telling the reporter about the holes, the reporter decides to leave. Then John tells the band that he will stay until tomorrow. The next day, John is gone. The band searched everywhere, but is not able to find him. ",
"An Earth music band of four is supposed to play at The Space Room on Mars, but the bass man is injured. The band boss, Ke-teeli, is discontented with the group and won't prolong the contract, he wants to cancel the concert. Jimmie Stanley, the leader of the band, is waiting for the bass man's replacement to save the band. If the band loses the job, they have nowhere to go. After a while of waiting, a huge monstrosity enters The Space Room accompanied by a little guy in a suit, a matchstick. The newcomer is John Smith, the bass man from Mars, who is late because he has been working on his plan of getting back home. When the band starts playing, everyone is enchanted with John's playing, which is the best and the most unique sound they've ever heard. During the intermission, John mentions that his fiddle is over five thousand years old but its hole isn't right for going home. Jimmie is confused with this and the band continues playing. John stares at the holes in the instruments of the rest of the band. At intermission Jimmie offers John a drink to urge him to join the band. John is unwilling to accept the offer as he is more interested in history and his plan than in music. Turns out he fell into a hole a while ago and now he can't get back to his time dimension. For three days John plays with the band and talks of holes to Jimmie, whom he sees as an understanding person. Then John is interviewed and the reporter won't listen about his holes, so he decides to quit the band and continue searching for them. Next day Jimmie leaves for a while thinking about how to urge the bass man to stay, and when he returns, John is drunk with beer. The two go out and suddenly John disappears. The band can't find him anywhere and their contract ends. \n",
"The story begins on a Saturday night at The Space Room. Jimmie Stanley and two other members of his band are sitting in the bandstand of the cocktail lounge. The bass fiddle man, Ziggy, is not present because he had almost sliced his fingers off while opening a can of Santurnian ice-fish. The boss Ke-teeli, also known as Goon-Face, is furious that no music is being played at the establishment. They explain that a Marsport local has been called a stand-in for the bassist, while Ke-teeli is suspicious. John Smith from the Marsport union comes in shortly after. Jimmie is intimidated by his bass fiddle, and John Smith explains that he knows how to play everything. As they begin playing, John Smith plays a whole chord with each beat on his bass. The customers are in some trance, and even bland-faced Martians begin nodding in time to the rhythm. After their performance, John Smith explains that his instrument is over five thousand years old, and it is not a fiddle but the only Zloomph in existence. He points out the holes on the other band member’s instruments. Jimmie tries to convince him to join the combo, but John explains that he does not care much for playing even when Jimmie offers to share his apartment. He is focused on his plan, which involves studying holes and how they relate to the universe. John further explains that he fell through his time dimension while hurrying back to the University with his Zloomph to prove something in ancient history. Jimmie agrees to listen to him if he plays with them, which makes John extremely happy. John becomes extremely popular with all of the customers, and Goon-Face tells Jimmie that they will continue to have their contract if the bass fiddle man stays. A reporter approaches John for an interview over beer, and he tries to tell him his plan. However, it turns out that the reporter does not understand, and John is down again. Fat Boy exclaims that they are also working on a plan in an attempt to make him stay. As Jimmie thinks about what can make John stay, he comes up with a variety of plans. As he returns to his apartment in the early afternoon, he finds John squatting on the floor and surrounded by beer bottles. John is scared because he is covered in holes, but Jimmie is not convinced and takes him out to get some fresh air. It is four AM in the morning; suddenly, John disappears through the manhole with his Zloomph. Jimmie jumps into it after him, but he has completely disappeared without a trace. Goon-Face does not offer them another contract, and they desperately search everywhere for John. Ziggy, now healed, signs up for a trip to the uranium pits, and Jimmie is furious at whoever let John back to his time dimension. However, he knows that they cannot sue the city without a corpus delecti. "
] |
32667
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He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
|
Why is it important to Jimmie for John to continue playing with the band?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Holes and John Smith by Edward W. Ludwig.
Relevant chunks:
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
Question:
Why is it important to Jimmie for John to continue playing with the band?
Answer:
|
[
"Jimmie’s friend, Hammer-Head talks about the black puts of Neptune as a place that he and the rest of the band will likely go to if they do not secure a contract with The Goon. The black pits of Neptune is a place for musicians that are past their prime. \n\nThe Goon does not enjoy the band’s music and threatens to not let them play at his establishment anymore. However, The Goon likes the music when John Smith plays with the band and especially the reception of the audience when John Smith is playing with the band. The Goon says that he will give the band a contract as long as John Smith agrees to join with his Zloomph. It is important to Jimmie for John to continue playing with the band so that they can get an employment contract from The Goon. \n",
"It is important for Jimmie to continue playing with the band because the boss was not satisfied with their music before his arrival. Their contract ends this week, but it seems the boss is unlikely to continue it. After he plays his music on the bass fiddle, the boss is surprised by it. He enjoys the music. The audiences also like it. Noticing the change in the boss’ attitude towards the music, Jimmie knows that he has to persuade John to join the band in order to get a contract. Later, the boss explicitly states that there will be a contract if the bass fiddle man stays, else there won’t be any. Thus, Jimmie has to make John stay in the band. ",
"The future of the whole band depends on John. The bass man hurt his fingers and he needs replacement. John is much better that the bass men, his music is extremely unique and even the most indifferent people in the room pay attention to it. Everyone adores him playing, without him the band was never really popular. Their concerts were not payed off well, their music didn't touch people, their boss was discontented. Their contract is ending and to prolong it they need John. Jimmie cares for the future of his band and the contract a lot as they can't do any other job and unsuccessful musicians can only go to the uranium pits of Neptune, where life is short. They don't even have money for fare. ",
"It is important to Jimmie for John to continue playing because the band will be allowed to continue playing in The Space Room and get their contracts renewed with Goon-Face. He considers John to be the best bass player in the galaxy and wants him to continue so the band can continue to earn a living. Jimmie even offers John a place to stay and doesn’t mind babying him for the rest of his life if it means that the other man will continue to play the bass. His plans include breaking John’s leg, finding an Earth blonde to capture his interest, or even forging a letter from the University to tell him that his theory is valid as a means of getting the man to stay. "
] |
32667
|
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
|
What is the relationship between The Goon and the band?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Holes and John Smith by Edward W. Ludwig.
Relevant chunks:
He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
Question:
What is the relationship between The Goon and the band?
Answer:
|
[
"The Goon has many names and is also referred to as Ke-teeli and The Face. Ke-teeli is the boss of the three current members of the band, one member is out because he is injured. Ke-teeli owns an establishment that the band performs at. However, Ke-teeli repeatedly expresses his frustration and distaste over the band’s music. Jimmie Stanley believes that Ke-teeli is really more unhappy with the lack of money that his establishment, The Space Room, is earning. \n\nWhen John Smith joins the band with his Zloomph instrument, The Goon seems to respond well. More cash is flowing into the business as the audience agrees with the music. However, The Goon will not let the bandmates sign a contract with him for their unemployment unless they can guarantee that John Smith and his Zloomph instrument will join them. \n",
"The Goon is the boss of the band. He is upset that the bass fiddle man is missing. Jimmie mentions that The Goon will be angry if he finds out that there’s a cigarette hole burned in it. The band sometimes refers The Goon as Goon-Face and The Eye. This is the last week before the band’s contract with The Goon ends. The band is worried that The Goon will not continue the contract since he has been showing little enthusiasm for their music. He always comment either too fast and loud or too slow and soft. He even states that it is better to have the customers disappointed than have them hear bad music. After he sees The Goon staring at them, Jimmie decides to start playing. Once The Goon hears the beautiful music played by John, he looks very surprised and is enjoying it. In the end, The Goon states that there will be a contract if the fiddle player comes as well. ",
"Goon-Face is the boss of the band. He is a business man and is looking only for profit, which doesn't satisfy him. The contract is ending soon and he doesn't see the reason in prolonging it. He is very irritable and considers the band's music bad. He liked John, but without him he doesn't need the band. He is cold and direct, his speech is concise. It's impossible to convince him or beg for something, he stays indifferent. ",
"Goon-Face runs The Space Room and is considered to be the boss of the band. They have a contract with him to play their music at the establishment. However, Goon-Face is initially very displeased by the fact that there are only three members present. He is also unwilling to renew the contract and constantly criticizes the band’s music. Jimmie believes that the real reason is that there is not enough business in the establishment. Even when Jimmie says that the three of them will continue to play, if the fourth does not show up, Goon-Face is not impressed and says that having no music is better than bad music. He even tells them that if no bassist shows up, then they will go home. Once John Smith plays, he is pleased and beams like a kitten who has seen a quart of cream. Business begins to get better, but he is still cautious of the contract. He tells the band that he will only continue their contract if John Smith stays and signs it. After John disappears, he is furious again and refuses to discuss any contract because the bass fiddle man is gone. "
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32667
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He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was —whoops!...
The Holes and John Smith
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustration by Kelly Freas
It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room . If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place:
"A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."
Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.
We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth:
"The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."
But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.
Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.
"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.
I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."
Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.
"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.
I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.
"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"
Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."
Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."
"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."
Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.
"Five meenutes!" he shrieked.
"Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.
We waited.
Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.
"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"
"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.
"Using what for fare?" I asked.
"Your brains?"
Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."
The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.
Then it happened.
From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.
The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.
His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.
The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.
"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."
A moment's silence.
"Your plan?" I echoed at last.
"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.
Hummm, I thought.
My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.
"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering.
"Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You ?"
"I know everything ," said John Smith.
I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.
And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.
Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—
My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.
The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.
First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom , and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom , just like the tones of all bass fiddles.
But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.
I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.
I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.
We finished On An Asteroid With You , modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan .
We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.
"If I didn't hear it," I gasped,
"I wouldn't believe it!"
"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.
"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph . This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."
I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.
"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.
He turned his sad eyes to me.
"For going home," he said.
Hummm, I thought.
We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars . He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph —with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.
But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment.
"Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."
Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"
John Smith nodded. "Unusual."
Hummm, I thought again.
Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"
He pointed.
"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."
"Even there," he said softly,
"even there...."
There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.
It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.
Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.
At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"
He shook his head.
"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"
His grunt was negative.
"Then some old-fashioned beer?"
He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."
I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.
"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."
John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."
"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."
He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration.
"I don't know," he finally drawled.
"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef,
'copter landing—if we ever get a
'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."
His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.
He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:
"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."
"What do you like to do, John?"
His string-bean of a body stiffened.
"I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."
Oh Lord, that plan again!
I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."
He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."
Oh, oh , I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.
"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."
"Holes?" I kept a straight face.
"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"
I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.
His voice trembled with emotion.
"Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"
"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"
He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence.
"What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"
I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"
He was speaking rapidly again now.
"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."
I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"
"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, " just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."
His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."
"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."
He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."
"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"
"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you . You understand."
Thank heaven!
Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.
John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.
Goon-Face was still cautious.
"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."
"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."
"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."
Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.
A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.
"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed.
"I—I'm scared.
"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."
We watched.
John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.
John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.
John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.
The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.
John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.
"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"
I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"
We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.
"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration.
"We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said.
"We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me.
"No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's—"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror.
"No, my— my body's full of holes . Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his Zloomph , clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm.
"Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph , and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph —steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.
Then—he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp— Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....
Tonight is our last night at The Space Room . Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Valley by Richard Stockham.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Michael and Mary were sent to look for another planet for humans to live on. After looking for two thousand years, their \"Milky Way\" expedition had failed to find an alternative, but humans were desperate because Earth was scorched and not easily liveable. The President is taken aback by the news, and his council looked at some footage from the expedition, watching ships explode and seeing dangerous atmospheres that would not sustain human life. A thousand people were grown from cultured scar tissue only to die violent deaths, so people yelled for the video to be shut off. President Davis explains that violent death is an unfamiliar thing to the contemporary humans, so he decided to lie to the public about the expedition details. Michael had promised Mary they would stay on Earth, but the government lying to the public was hard--Mary suggests that Michael can still leave, but he doesn't want to go without her, and she wants to stay on the planet she came from, even if it means a difficult life on Earth. They remember their lockets, that give them the option of a quick death in case they had gotten trapped in a dangerous situation, but they don't want to threaten to kill themselves either. Mary admits she's pregnant, which is surprising because humans in this day are cultured from scar tissue. With heavy hearts, they looked out onto the city where the large TV screens were promising the public an idyllic planet that would one day be recovered again, through a different mission, which is disheartening because their own mission had turned into a lie. They went back into the council chambers and sat again. Michael and Mary were told they'd be kept in solitary confinement to protect the public, which was ironic since Mary wanted to stay on Earth to avoid loneliness. Michael reminds the President of the lockets he and his wife have, and there is panic--what is there to do? The President demanded they hand over the lockets, but Michael and Mary stay strong and ask to be let outside of the city's protective barrier so that they can experience a natural death. The President conceded, so that he didn't have to look at them anymore, and gave them the car that they asked for. They have supplies to last a year, but don't know where to go or what to do. They get out of their car and take their shoes off to walk around, experiencing quiet for the first time in memory. To their surprise, they found three blades of grass, and run to a hill to see other patches of green in the area, some animals, and a small spring. They have hope: they can build a house, have a child, and eventually they can show the ones in the city that there is hope much closer than they realized. ",
"Michael and Mary arrive back on Earth after a 2,000-year expedition scouting the galaxy for any potential new planets for humans to move to. After finding nothing, Michael is hesitant to report the news back to Earth and wants to stay in space. Mary, however, insists they return to Earth, so they step out of their spaceship and give the first press conference detailing their failed exploit. Michael does not hold back on the details and shocks the hopeful humans to their core. The President pulls them aside and interrogates them with his council. They share all the pictures from their adventures into the galaxy, showing yellow aliens, planets with deadly atmospheres, and horrific images of the other couples on the expedition dying. The council becomes ill at the images of their gruesome deaths, so the President shuts down the slideshow. Apparently, humans were no longer accustomed to violent deaths, as they hadn’t had to see any for thousands of years. The last time such an occurrence happened, a man was struck and killed by a ground car, and all the witnesses were driven mad. The President had shut down any potential violent deaths from then on. \nThe President asks for hope from Michael and Mary, but they are unable to give him any. They send them out of the chambers to deliberate their fate. Michael and Mary discuss their options. Mary wants to stay and die on Earth, while Michael wants to escape. They decide to use their lockets which cause instant death for the wearers to force the council’s hand. Mary reveals that she is pregnant, something that hasn’t occurred for three thousand years due to overpopulation laws, and Michael agrees to stay on Earth. \nThey return to the chambers, and the President delivers their verdict. They are condemned to isolation until the next expedition is set out, because he fears they will reveal the truth to Earth. He sent out a broadcast earlier saying there was hope after all, as they had found a planet, but lost it, so another expedition would be sent out soon. Michael and Mary refuse their isolation, and threaten to kill themselves with the lockets unless they are released and given a ground car and supplies. The President agrees after he and his congregation are thrown by the thought of watching someone die in front of their eyes. \nThe story flashes forward to Mary and Michael driving out of the city and into the sandy mountains. They come to a valley and step out of the car, placing their bare feet on the soil. Mary sees three blades of grass and shows Michael excitedly. They run down the hill and discover baby trees, flowers, wildlife, and a small stream. The Earth is healing itself, and they had the proof. Thrilled that htey will be able to live off the land, they start planning where they will put their cabin and when they will reintroduce this new Earth to humanity. \n",
"Michael and Mary are returning from a mission to discover other planets in the Milky Way suitable for human colonization. During their exploration, which spanned two thousand years, the one thousand other humans sent with them had all died. They are the lone survivors, returning to Earth with grave news that there is no other place in the galaxy humans can move to. The remaining humans on Earth are overjoyed when they make radio contact because their life on Earth is confined to a city huddled around a water hole in a desert where their technology for distilling the salty water is the only thing keeping them alive on a planet they condemn as devoid of any other resources.\n \nMichael is hesitant to land on Earth, but Mary is determined to spend the rest of her life there now. They land and deliver a speech to a cheering crowd of white faces that are the same as those that had cheered when their mission departed two thousand years ago. Humans have technology to tissue culture new bodies and effectively become immortal. Pregnancy was outlawed 3000 years ago to control the population, and ever since then they have been regenerating their bodies. Michael announces that there are no other habitable planets. President Davis begs Michael to retract what he has said, and tells the public that there has been a mistake, that everything will be “all right”, and that they should go back to work and wait for more information. \nMichael and Mary are brought to the council to deliver a 60 second video documenting their entire two thousand year mission. Most disturbing is that it shows the violent deaths of many explorers - some being sucked into the gravity of foreign planets, or their ships exploding after colliding with meteors. Violent death was last witnessed on Earth hundreds of years ago, and all of the witnesses went insane. The video is shocking and disturbing. The President quickly denies the validity of the video evidence, desperately trying to avoid any hysteria by the public. Michael and Mary are told to wait outside the council chambers while their fate is decided. \nMichael thinks they should have never landed on the planet, but Mary reveals she is pregnant and wants to remain on Earth. They plan to leave the city by threatening to kill themselves in front of the council. Out the window, they glimpse a public screen projection showing that there is going to be a new mission to space and everything will be “all right”. The council decides Michael and Mary will be placed in solitary confinement. The couple threaten to kill themselves using their lockets in front of the council, a violent death that would make those who see it go insane. They demand a ground car with a year of supplies, which they are granted. They leave the city together and soon discover an oasis with spring water to build a house next to and raise their child.",
"Michael and Mary return to Earth from a 2,000-year-long mission to find a planet suitable for human habitation because Earth's resources have slowly dwindled away due to human greed and atomic war. Michael would rather end his life than tell those remaining on Earth that their mission had failed, but Mary believes they owe it to the one thousand who had perished on the expedition to reveal the truth to them. Besides, 2,000 years away from Earth is a long time, and she misses home. A crowd eagerly welcomes them, including President Davis, and Michael soon confesses no planets exist that can support human life. He and Mary have returned to Earth to stay and die. President Davis whisks them away from the troubled crowd and brings them to the council chambers, where Michael and Mary reveal the documentary footage of their trip. They show the council hundreds of years' worth of visual evidence of all the planets they visited, all the strange creatures they encountered, and, worst of all, the explicit, violent deaths of their fellow travelers. Upon seeing these deaths, the council members insist Michael and Mary turn off the footage. They are horrified by the violent images because it has been hundreds of years since any human has died a violent death; seeing such images would drive them insane. As the President and council members discuss the couple's fate, Michael and Mary await their decision and discuss what to do next. Michael wants to go back to space, while Mary wants to stay on Earth because she has grown weary of traveling and exhausted by the process of reincarnation that has kept them both alive for 2,000 years. Mary reminds Michael of the lockets they carry--lockets that were given to them prior to departing for their journey that have the power to kill them instantly in order to avoid a painful death. Mary suggests using this locket as leverage against the council, who would grant whatever they asked in exchange for not having to witness their gruesome suicides in person. She also reveals she is pregnant. Later, President Davis announces the council has altered their documentary footage in order to spare the hope of their people, and he tells Michael and Mary that they will spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement with everything provided for them, including the tools of reincarnation. At that moment, Michael threatens to trigger his locket unless the council gives him and Mary a ground car and provisions and lets them leave the force walls surrounding the last-remaining Earth settlement. President Davis grants their wish. Together, Michael and Mary head out into the desolation of Earth. Soon they discover evidence of new life on Earth including grass, birds, and water. They set out to build their home and prepare to restore civilization."
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
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Describe Michael and Mary's relationship and their conflicting preferences
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Valley by Richard Stockham.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
Question:
Describe Michael and Mary's relationship and their conflicting preferences
Answer:
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[
"Michael and Mary are two humans who were sent on an expedition to find a habitable planet elsewhere in the solar system after humans destroyed their own planet during the Atomic Wars, and continued to drive it into the ground through their own greed for resources. Three thousand years after the Wars, the expedition was sent out (so five thousand years have passed in total since the Wars). Michael and Mary are the only two people who survived, and their return was two thousand years after they left Earth. They are married, though contemporary relationships do not involve much physical touching as compared to the twenty-first century, in a few ways. When Michael hugs Mary to comfort her, he mentions that it is a custom of the past. In their society, it is illegal to have children through sexual intercourse, so it is a surprise at the end of the story when Mary admits that she might be pregnant. They have endured a lot together on their mission in outer space, and have had to watch a lot of people die. It was very isolating to be in space, living on a ship, and this is part of their other major discussion: what to do when their mission was over. Michael had some desire to stay in space and not return to the scorched planet. However, Mary wanted to return to Earth, and the two of them wanted to stay together no matter what. This turned out to work in their favor: staying on Earth but wanting to stay alive is what gave them the opportunity to find the patches of life they found at the end of the story. ",
"The first initial conflict of the story is the debate between Michael and Mary as to whether or not to return to the stars or stay on Earth. Mary wants to place her feet on solid ground again and die with the earth as humans were meant to do, but Michael wants to return to space and escape the burden of sharing their catastrophic news with their fellow man. Mary wins the debate, claiming that she hasn’t asked much of Michael over their 2,000-year relationship. \nAs the story continues, the reader sees how they deal with their trauma differently. Michael still wants to return to space and asks Mary if they can after presenting their findings to the President’s council. She says he can go without her, but he doesn’t think he could be away from her. Mary wants to die on the earth, while Michael wants to escape to space once again. When Michael hears that Mary is pregnant, he hops on board with her idea to stay on Earth. \nMichael and Mary are clearly a team. They have worked and existed together for 2,000 years without change and have watched all their friends and colleagues die. This trauma clearly bonded them, as Michael says he could never return to space without Mary. Although they may differ, they reach compromises and work together to find the best solution for the two of them. \n",
"Michael and Mary are two humans from Earth who have effectively become immortal through a scar tissue culturing technology that allows them to continually regenerate entirely new bodies for themselves as their bodies grow old and die. They have been regenerating their bodies like this, and living on a spaceship together exploring the Milky Way for 2000 years. They love each other deeply.\nWhen they finally return to Earth to deliver the horrible news that there is no other planet in the galaxy that humans can live on, Mary declares to him that she must stay on Earth. She insists that she has loved him for so long (thousands of years) and has asked for very little except for them to now remain on Earth. \nMichael feels as though they should not have ever landed on Earth, but instead wishes they just delivered their message by radio and returned back into space. He can’t understand why she wants to live on Earth when it is so desolate. However, he says that he can not be without her and will kill himself if he were to go back into space alone. When Mary reveals in private to Michael that she is pregnant, they know they will not be accepted by society and hatch a plan to leave the city together. A human has not given birth to a child for 3000 years on Earth. Pregnancy was forbidden to reduce the population until it was low enough that there were sufficient resources available to sustain those that remained.\nThey successfully escape their city and the fate of solitary confinement from the council by threatening to kill themselves with their lockets, which would be a violent death that would cause the onlookers to go insane. This is so shocking and unacceptable to the council that the President grants them a ground car and a year of supplies to leave the city and never return. Michael and Mary find an oasis with vegetation and fresh spring water not far on their journey outside the city. It is a place for them to build a house and raise their child, which is joyful for both of them.\n",
"Michael and Mary are a couple deeply in love. They join a crew of one thousand other humans, also comprised of couples, who leave Earth in order to find another habitable planet. As their fellow travelers slowly die over the course of 2,000 years, Michael and Mary continue to reincarnate through a special process of culturing their scar tissue. They also carry lockets that can kill them instantly when triggered and help them avoid a painful death. When they realize their mission has failed, Michael and Mary return to Earth to announce the news. Michael wishes to go back to space since he cannot stand the desolation of Earth and would rather spend the rest of his existence with Mary exploring the universe. Mary wants to stay on Earth because she misses her home and because she is pregnant, although she does not reveal this to Michael until just before President Davis reveals his decision to place the couple in solitary confinement. Michael is shocked because pregnancy had been banned on Earth at the time that atomic war and human greed had laid bare the planet's essential resources. Together, they decide to use their lockets as leverage against the council to force them to permit them to leave the city. Soon after doing so, they discover Earth is regenerating, and they will be able to make a new home for their child."
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32744
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
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What is the role of the lockets in the story and how do they connect to the various societies
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Valley by Richard Stockham.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
Question:
What is the role of the lockets in the story and how do they connect to the various societies
Answer:
|
[
"Michael and Mary, who have both just returned from a long expedition in a spacecraft, each keep a small golden locket around their neck. They were given these when they left on their mission, as a sort of escape hatch: if they were ever caught in a dangerous situation where they would have to die painful deaths, they could scratch themselves with the locket and they would die a quick and painless death instead of suffering. This is the first hint we see at the society's growing avoidance of painful deaths. For the people on the expedition, they were a tool to be used in case of emergency for the sake of the person wearing them. In the context of the society on Earth, however, they were a tool to negotiate the terms of how Michael and Mary would live. They considered threatening using these lockets to kill themselves, which they eventually did in a discussion with the President and his council. After they used the lockets, although they would die painless deaths, it would look very painful to the witnesses as the bodies experienced shock, so President Davis didn't want his people to see this. ",
"The lockets were given to all of the many members of the expedition into space to find a new, untainted home planet. These necklaces were outfitted with a device that would kill the wearer, presumably when held up to their throats as is demonstrated in the story, painlessly and quickly. In the 2,000 years since Michael, Mary, and the rest of the expedition left Earth, humans grew unaccustomed to violence. In fact, the sight of a man being killed by a ground car on accident sent all witnesses into a state of utter insanity. This incapacity for violence turns out to be of great use to Michael and Mary, who saw the rest of their team die horrible, bloody deaths over the course of their two-thousand-year-long journey. \nAfter the President condemns Michael and Mary to isolation due to their findings and unwillingness to return to space or lie to the public, the two threaten to kill themselves in front of his whole congregation, which would send the room into shock and panic. People begin to freak out, whispering about how crazy they are, but the President and his colleagues see the real danger in this. They don’t believe Mary and Michael will actually do it, so they step closer to them, which only causes them to bring the lockets closer to their necks. The President and his people’s unfamiliarity with violence saves Michael and Mary from isolation, as the President grants all their wishes in return for their lives. \n",
"The lockets were given to the original cohort of space explorers, including Michael and Mary, that went out on a two thousand year mission to find other planets suitable for human colonization in the Milky Way galaxy. The function of the locket is to provide a quick and painless death to the wearer should they be in a situation where they are going to have a painful death. The wearer simply presses the locket and scratches themselves with it to kill themselves. Although painless to them, their bodies appear to writhe and convulse until they go lifeless. \nMichael and Mary use the threat of killing themselves with their lockets in front of the President and the council to demand they be allowed to leave the city in a ground car with supplies instead of being put into solitary confinement for the foreseen future. They cause an uproar in the council chambers when they hold the lockets to their necks, with onlookers shocked and frightened by the thought of their own horrible fate if they witness their death. This is effective, because the death from the locket appears violent to those watching and they fear going insane if they see it.\nLockets are a method for the explorers to kill themselves, which is an interesting juxtaposition to the society remaining on Earth. Their main objective is perpetuating themselves through scar tissue regeneration technology that essentially provides them with immortality, and strict avoidance of death. \n",
"Prior to leaving for the mission to find a habitable planet for humans to relocate to, Michael and Mary are both given lockets that can be triggered to cause immediate death. The purpose is to avoid a potentially violent and painful death from whatever threat might be encountered out in unknown space. When they return to Earth 2,000 years later, Michael wants to press the locket rather than return to inform the people of their failure. Mary insists they return, however, presumably because she misses home (in reality, it is because she is pregnant). After President Davis and the council meet privately to determine the couple's fate, Mary reminds Michael that they have a bargaining chip available to them that will allow them to determine their own fate: the lockets. Because humans have not seen violent death in hundreds of years, Mary knows that the council will yield to whatever they demand in exchange for not having to witness their suicides in person. In this way, Michael and Mary negotiate their release from the city and are effectively banished outside the force walls."
] |
32744
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
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Describe the President's communciations to the public and the reasoning behind his choices
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Valley by Richard Stockham.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
Question:
Describe the President's communciations to the public and the reasoning behind his choices
Answer:
|
[
"In the earth of the future that is at the center of this story, the society has managed to reduce accidents so much that violent deaths do not happen. This happened because some people reacted with hysterics to witnessing death of this type, so efforts were made to avoid the issue entirely, which had been successful for the past few hundred years. President Davis did not want the public to hear any more details about the expedition after Michael and Mary first addressed everyone. He says that the only reason the public has not lost all sense after seeing some of the footage from the expedition is that it was visual media and stories, but not something people witnessed first-hand for themselves. However, he does not want to expose the people to the violent deaths that the people on the expedition suffered, so he claims that Michael and Mary did not tell the truth, in an effort to save face. The President considers this type of lying to be for the good of the people, who cannot handle the reality of the expedition. He also does not think that the people could handle the loss of hope for another planet to live on, which is why he plays the ad campaigns for a new expediton in a different solar system that aims to eventually find (or rediscover, in his words) another planet for humans to inhabit, perhaps in Andromeda. In this way, the President thinks it is better for his people to have false hope instead of no hope at all. The reader sees the irony in this at the end of the story when Michael and Mary find the patch of life that has started to re-establish itself outside of the boundaries of the city they ventured from. ",
"Michael and Mary return to Earth after 2,000 years only to report the worst news possible: there is no other virgin planet in this galaxy that has the ability to shelter humans. They announce their news to the public, but the President quickly shuts down the conference and brings them inside so they can report their more detailed findings. After showing them the pictures of the various planets, aliens, and demises of their colleagues, they concur once again that Earth is their only home. However, the President lies to the public, releasing a broadcast stating that they found and lost a planet, and another expedition will be sent out shortly to relocate their new home. He claims that his people need hope to keep going, which may be true. After living for thousands of years through reincarnation on barren Earth, his people are desperate for hope and a new planet. Without hope, their entire society would fall apart, as their eventual deaths would become a very real future. ",
"When Michael and Mary land on Earth and report that there are no other habitable planets for humans to move to in the Milky Way galaxy after two thousand years of space exploration, President Davis quickly moves to silence their truth. The President begs Michael to take back what he has said to the people, and when he refuses, the President quickly pivots the message to the public. He declares that there has been a mistake, and tells them that everything will be “all right” and that they should all go back to the pumps and distilleries to work and wait for more information.\nMichael and Mary present deeply disturbing video evidence to the President and council detailing the gruesome deaths of their thousand other peers sent on the mission because of the dangers of space travel. Some died by explosions in meteor fields or getting sucked into the gravity of dangerous planetary bodies. The President knows that the people of Earth have not witnessed the image of a violent death in hundreds of years, and that the last time it was seen all the witnesses went insane. The President quickly denies the video evidence in front of the council, saying that what they showed was only a picture, and if it were screened for the rest of the people on Earth there would be mass hysteria.\nThe President is desperately trying to avoid any hysteria by the public, and fears that if they knew the real truth from Michael and Mary that their society would cease to function entirely. The council ultimately decides that Michael and Mary will never be allowed to mingle with the public on Earth because their truth is too dangerous for people to know. They will be taken care of, and allowed to continue their lives as they have been in solitary confinement. The President informs the public that the statement Michael made was untrue, and quickly begins a new ad campaign of hope in the city by announcing a new mission to explore a different galaxy for habitable planets.\n",
"When Michael and Mary return from space, President Davis is overwhelmed but hopeful that they have discovered a planet suitable for human life. When Michael unceremoniously reveals that the mission was a failure, President Davis immediately ushers them off stage and takes them before a small council, where they show them the visual footage with evidence proving their mission to be a failure along with the violent deaths of the rest of their thousand-person cohort. President Davis explains that the remaining humans have not seen a violent human death in hundreds of years and seeing such footage would surely drive them insane. The council members themselves lash out and insist the footage be turned off when they see it. After convening privately with the council, President Davis informs Michael and Mary that they have scrubbed the violent footage and replaced it with images intended to give the people hope that there is a habitable planet. He also informs them that they will be placed in solitary confinement with all necessities and comforts provided to them as thanks for their service to humankind. He reasons that keeping them away from the rest of the people will help preserve the image of hope he wants to foster amongst the people."
] |
32744
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE VALLEY
By Richard Stockham
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
If you can't find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.
The Ship dove into Earth's sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.
Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.
The ship's radio cried out. "You've made it! Thank God! You've made it!"
Another voice, shaking, said, "President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can't go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you." A pause. "Please come in!"
The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.
"I can't tell them," said the man.
"Please come in!" said the radio. "Do you hear me?"
The woman looked up at the man. "You've got to Michael!"
"Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it's burned to a cinder."
A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. "Are you all right? Stand by! We're sending a rescue ship."
"They've got a right to know what we've found," said the woman. "They sent us out. They've waited so long—."
He stared into space. "It's hopeless. If we'd found another planet they could live on, they'd do the same as they've done here."
He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. "Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over."
"No. A thousand of us died. You've got to think of them."
"We'll go back out into space," he said. "It's clean out there. I'm tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation."
She spoke softly. "We've been together for a long time. I've loved you. I've asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. "Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We're all right. We're coming in."
The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.
The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.
A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.
And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.
Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.
A microphone was thrust into Michael's hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.
The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.
And then Michael's voice, "The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we've known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we've been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we've found.... We were given Earth. There's no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There's no place else for them. We've all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we've made the worst of it. So we're here to stay—and die." He handed the microphone back.
The silence did not change.
The President grasped Michael's arm. "What're you saying?"
A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.
Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.
"Good God," said the President. "You've got to tell them what you said isn't true!"
"We've been searching two thousand years for a truth," said Michael.
"A thousand of us have died finding it. I've told it. That's the way it's got to be."
The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.
"There's been some mistake!" he cried. "Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We'll get the full truth to you. Everything's going to be all right !"
Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.
They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.
The President stood. "Members of the council." He paused. "As you heard, they report—complete failure." He turned to Michael. "And now, the proof."
Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.
Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.
The dark shapes of smaller spheres circling the blinding ones moved forward into the picture; red, blue, green, yellow, purple and many mixtures of all these, and then one planet filled the screen, seeming to be inflated, like a balloon, into a shining red ball. There was a razor edge of horizon then and pink sky and an expanse of crimson. Flat, yellow creatures lay all around, expanding and contracting. A roaring rose and fell like the roaring of a million winds. Then fear flowed out of the picture into the minds of the watchers so that they gasped and cringed, and a silent voice told them that the atmosphere of this planet would disintegrate a human being.
Now the red ball seemed to pull away from them into the blackness and the blinding balls of light, and all around could be seen the streaks of rocket flame shooting away in all directions.
Suddenly a flash cut the blackness, like the flare of a match, and died, and the watchers caught from the screen the awareness of the death of a ship.
They were also aware of the rushing of time through centuries and they saw the streaking rocket flames and planets rushing at them; saw creatures in squares and circles, in threads wriggling, in lumps and blobs, rolling jumping and crawling; saw them in cloud forms whisking about, changing their shapes, and in flowing wavelets of water. They saw creatures hopping about on one leg and others crawling at incredible speeds on a thousand; saw some with all the numbers of legs and arms in between; and were aware of creatures that were there but invisible.
And those watching the screen on which time and distance were a compressed and distilled kaleidoscope, saw planet after planet and thousands at a time; heard strange noises; rasping and roaring, clinks and whistles, screams and crying, sighing and moaning. And they were aware through all this of atmosphere and ground inimical to man, some that would evaporate at the touch of a human body, or would burst into flame, or swallow, or turn from liquid to solid or solid to liquid. They saw and heard chemical analyses, were aware of this ocean of blackness and clouds of white through which man might move, and must ever move, because he could live only upon this floating dust speck that was Earth.
The picture faded in, close to one of the long, needle nosed crafts, showing inside, a man and a woman. Time was telescoped again while the man cut a tiny piece of scar tissue from his arm and that of the woman, put them in bottles and set them into compartments where solutions dripped rhythmically into the bottles, the temperature was held at that of the human body, and synthetic sunlight focused upon them from many pencil like tubes.
The watchers in the council chamber saw the bits of tissue swell into human embryos in a few seconds, and grow arms and legs and faces and extend themselves into babies. Saw them taken from the bottles and cared for, and become replicas of the man and woman controlling the ship, who, all this time were aging, until life went out of their bodies. Then the ones who had been the scar tissue disintegrated them in the coffin-like tubes and let their dust be sucked out into space—all this through millions of miles and a hundred years, compressed for the watchers into sixty seconds and a few feet of space.
Instantly there was black space on the screen again, with the fingers of flame pointing out behind the dark bodies of the ships.
And then the spectators saw one ship shudder and swerve into a blazing, bluish white star, like a gnat flying into a white hot poker; saw another drop away and away, out and out into the blackness past the swirling white rim of the galaxy, and sink into a dark nothingness.
Great balls of rock showered like hail onto other ships, smashing them into grotesque tin cans. The stream of fire at the tail of another ship suddenly died and the ship floated into an orbit around a great, yellow planet, ten times the size of Jupiter, then was sucked into it. Another burst like a bomb, flinging a man and woman out into the darkness, where they hung suspended, frozen into statues, like bodies drowned in the depths of an Arctic sea.
At this instant from the watching council, there were screams of horror and voices crying out, "Shut it off! Shut it off!" There was a moving about in the darkness. Murmurs and harsh cries of disapproval grew in volume.
Another ship in the picture was split down the side by a meteor and the bodies inside were impaled on jagged blades of steel, the contorted, bloody faces lighted by bursts of flame. And the screams and cries of the spectators rose higher, "Shut it off.... Oh Lord...."
Lights flashed through the room and the picture died.
Michael and Mary, both staring, saw, along the line of desks, the agonized faces, some staring like white stones, others hidden in clutching fingers, as though they had been confronted by a Medusa. There was the sound of heavy breathing that mixed with the throbbing of the pumps. The President held tightly to the edges of his desk to quiet his trembling.
"There—there've been changes," he said, "since you've been out in space. There isn't a person on Earth who's seen a violent death for hundreds of years."
Michael faced him, frowning. "I don't follow you."
"Dying violently happened so seldom on Earth that, after a long time, the sight of it began to drive some people mad. And then one day a man was struck by one of the ground cars and everyone who saw it went insane. Since then we've eliminated accidents, even the idea. Now, no one is aware that death by violence is even a possibility."
"I'm sorry," said Michael, "we've been so close to violent death for so long.... What you've seen is part of the proof you asked for."
"What you showed us was a picture," said the President. "If it had been real, we'd all be insane by now. If it were shown to the people there'd be mass hysteria."
"But even if we'd found another habitable planet, getting to it would involve just what we've shown you. Maybe only a tenth of the people who left Earth, or a hundredth, would ever reach a destination out in space."
"We couldn't tolerate such a possibility," said the President gravely. "We'd have to find a way around it."
The pumps throbbed like giant hearts all through the stillness in the council chambers. The faces along the line of desks were smoothing out; the terror in them was fading away.
"And yet the Earth is almost dead," said Michael quietly, "and you can't bring it back to life."
"The sins of our past, Mr. Nelson," said the President. "The Atomic wars five thousand years ago. And the greed. It was too late a long time ago. That, of course, is why the expedition was sent out. And now you've come back to us with this terrible news." He looked around, slowly, then back to Michael. "Can you give us any hope at all?"
"None."
"Another expedition? To Andromeda perhaps? With you the leader?"
Michael shook his head. "We're finished with expeditions, Mr. President."
There were mutterings in the council, and hastily whispered consultations. Now they were watching the man and woman again.
"We feel," said the President, "it would be dangerous to allow you to go out among the people. They've been informed that your statement wasn't entirely true. This was necessary, to avoid a panic. The people simply must not know the whole truth." He paused. "Now we ask you to keep in mind that whatever we decide about the two of you will be for the good of the people."
Michael and Mary were silent.
"You'll wait outside the council chambers," the President went on,
"until we have reached our decision."
As the man and woman were led away, the pumps beat in the stillness, and at the edge of the shrinking seas the salt thick waters were being pulled into the distilleries, and from them into the tier upon tier of artificial gardens that sat like giant bee hives all around the shoreline; and the mounds of salt glistening in the sunlight behind the gardens were growing into mountains.
In their rooms, Michael and Mary were talking through the hours, and waiting. All around them were fragile, form-fitting chairs and translucent walls and a ceiling that, holding the light of the sun when they had first seen it, was now filled with moonlight.
Standing at a circular window, ten feet in diameter, Michael saw, far below, the lights of the city extending into the darkness along the shoreline of the sea.
"We should have delivered our message by radio," he said, "and gone back into space."
"You could probably still go," she said quietly.
He came and stood beside her. "I couldn't stand being out in space, or anywhere, without you."
She looked up at him. "We could go out into the wilderness, Michael, outside the force walls. We could go far away."
He turned from her. "It's all dead. What would be the use?"
"I came from the Earth," she said quietly. "And I've got to go back to it. Space is so cold and frightening. Steel walls and blackness and the rockets and the little pinpoints of light. It's a prison."
"But to die out there in the desert, in that dust." Then he paused and looked away from her. "We're crazy—talking as though we had a choice."
"Maybe they'll have to give us a choice."
"What're you talking about?"
"They went into hysterics at the sight of those bodies in the picture. Those young bodies that didn't die of old age."
He waited.
"They can't stand the sight of people dying violently."
Her hand went to her throat and touched the tiny locket.
"These lockets were given to us so we'd have a choice between suffering or quick painless death.... We still have a choice."
He touched the locket at his own throat and was very still for a long moment. "So we threaten to kill ourselves, before their eyes. What would it do to them?"
He was still for a long time. "Sometimes, Mary, I think I don't know you at all." A pause. "And so now you and I are back where we started. Which'll it be, space or Earth?"
"Michael." Her voice trembled. "I—I don't know how to say this."
He waited, frowning, watching her intently.
"I'm—going to have a child."
His face went blank.
Then he stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. He saw the softness there in her face; saw her eyes bright as though the sun were shining in them; saw a flush in her cheeks, as though she had been running. And suddenly his throat was full.
"No," he said thickly. "I can't believe it."
"It's true."
He held her for a long time, then he turned his eyes aside.
"Yes, I can see it is."
"I—I can't put into words why I let it happen, Michael."
He shook his head. "I don't know—what to—to say. It's so incredible."
"Maybe—I got so—tired—just seeing the two of us over and over again and the culturing of the scar tissue, for twenty centuries. Maybe that was it. It was just—something I felt I had to do. Some— real life again. Something new. I felt a need to produce something out of myself. It all started way out in space, while we were getting close to the solar system. I began to wonder if we'd ever get out of the ship alive or if we'd ever see a sunset again or a dawn or the night or morning like we'd seen on Earth—so—so long ago. And then I had to let it happen. It was a vague and strange thing. There was something forcing me. But at the same time I wanted it, too. I seemed to be willing it, seemed to be feeling it was a necessary thing." She paused, frowning. "I didn't stop to think—it would be like this."
"Such a thing," he said, smiling grimly, "hasn't happened on Earth for three thousand years. I can remember in school, reading in the history books, how the whole Earth was overcrowded and how the food and water had to be rationed and then how the laws were passed forbidding birth and after that how the people died and there weren't any more babies born, until at last there was plenty of what the Earth had to give, for everyone. And then the news was broken to everyone about the culturing of the scar tissue, and there were a few dissenters but they were soon conditioned out of their dissension and the population was stabilized." He paused. "After all this past history, I don't think the council could endure what you've done."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't think they could."
"And so this will be just for us ." He took her in his arms. "If I remember rightly, this is a traditional action." A pause. "Now I'll go with you out onto the Earth—if we can swing it. When we get outside the city, or if we do—Well, we'll see."
They were very still together and then he turned and stood by the window and looked down upon the city and she came and stood beside him.
They both saw it at the same time. And they watched, without speaking, both knowing what was in the other's mind and heart. They watched the giant four dimensional screens all through the city. A green, lush planet showed bright and clear on them and there were ships standing among the trees and men walking through the grass, that moved gently like the swells on a calm ocean, while into their minds came the thoughts projected from the screen:
"This will be your new home. It was found and then lost. But another expedition will be sent out to find it again. Be of good hope. Everything will be all right."
Michael turned from the window. "So there's our evidence. Two thousand years. All the others killed getting it. And with a simple twist, it becomes a lie."
Mary sat down and buried her face in her hands.
"What a terrible failure there's been here," said Michael. "The neglect and destruction of a whole planet. It's like a family letting their home decay all around them, and living in smaller and smaller rooms of it, until at last the rooms are all gone, and since they can't find another home, they all die in the ruins of the last room."
"I can't face dying," Mary said quietly, "squeezed in with all these people, in this tomb they've made around the seas. I want to have the open sky and the quiet away from those awful pounding pumps when I die. I want the spread of the Earth all around and the clean air. I want to be a real part of the Earth again."
Michael barely nodded in agreement. He was standing very still now.
And then there was the sound of the door opening.
They both rose, like mourners at a funeral, and went into the council chambers.
Again they sat in the thick chairs before the wall of desks with the faces of the council looking across it like defenders.
The pumps were beating, beating all through the room and the quiet.
The President was standing. He faced Michael and Mary, and seemed to set himself as though to deliver a blow, or to receive one.
"Michael and Mary," he said, his voice struggling against a tightness,
"we've considered a long time concerning what is to be done with you and the report you brought back to us from the galaxy." He took another swallow of water. "To protect the sanity of the people, we've changed your report. We've also decided that the people must be protected from the possibility of your spreading the truth, as you did at the landing field. So, for the good of the people, you'll be isolated. All comforts will be given you. After all, in a sense, you are heroes and martyrs. Your scar tissue will be cultured as it has been in the past, and you will stay in solitary confinement until the time when, perhaps, we can migrate to another planet. We feel that hope must not be destroyed. And so another expedition is being sent out. It may be that, in time, on another planet, you'll be able to take your place in our society."
He paused. "Is there anything you wish to say?"
"Yes, there is."
"Proceed."
Michael stared straight at the President. After a long moment, he raised his hand to the tiny locket at his throat.
"Perhaps you remember," he said, "the lockets given to every member of the expedition the night before we left. I still have mine." He raised it. "So does my wife. They were designed to kill the wearer instantly and painlessly if he were ever faced with pain or a terror he couldn't endure."
The President was standing again. A stir ran along the barricade of desks.
"We can't endure the city," went on Michael, "or its life and the ways of the people." He glanced along the line of staring faces.
"If what I think you're about to say is true," said the President in a shaking voice, "it would have been better if you'd never been born."
"Let's face facts, Mr. President. We were born and haven't died—yet." A pause. "And we can kill ourselves right here before your eyes. It'd be painless to us. We'd be unconscious. But there would be horrible convulsions and grimaces. Our bodies would be twisted and torn. They'd thresh about. The deaths you saw in the picture happened a long time ago, in outer space. You all went into hysterics at the sight of them. Our deaths now would be close and terrible to see."
The President staggered as though about to faint. There was a stirring and muttering and a jumping up along the desks. Voices cried out, in anger and fear. Arms waved and fists pounded. Hands clasped and unclasped and clawed at collars, and there was a pell mell rushing around the President. They yelled at each other and clasped each other by the shoulders, turned away and back again, and then suddenly became very still.
Now they began to step down from the raised line of desks, the President leading them, and came close to the man and woman, gathering around them in a wide half circle.
Michael and Mary were holding the lockets close to their throats. The half circle of people, with the President at its center was moving closer and closer. They were sweaty faces and red ones and dry white ones and hands were raised to seize them.
Michael put his arm around Mary's waist. He felt the trembling in her body and the waiting for death.
"Stop!" he said quietly.
They halted, in slight confusion, barely drawing back.
"If you want to see us die—just come a step closer.... And remember what'll happen to you."
The faces began turning to each other and there was an undertone of muttering and whispering. "A ghastly thing.... Instant.... Nothing to do.... Space's broken their minds.... They'll do it.... Eyes're mad.... What can we do?... What?..." The sweaty faces, the cold white ones, the flushed hot ones: all began to turn to the President, who was staring at the two before him like a man watching himself die in a mirror.
"I command you," he suddenly said, in a choked voice, "to—to give me those—lockets! It's your—duty!"
"We've only one duty, Mr. President," said Michael sharply. "To ourselves."
"You're sick. Give yourselves over to us. We'll help you."
"We've made our choice. We want an answer. Quickly! Now!"
The President's body sagged. "What—what is it you want?"
Michael threw the words. "To go beyond the force fields of the city. To go far out onto the Earth and live as long as we can, and then to die a natural death."
The half circle of faces turned to each other and muttered and whispered again. "In the name of God.... Let them go.... Contaminate us.... Like animals.... Get them out of here.... Let them be finished.... Best for us all.... And them...."
There was a turning to the President again and hands thrusting him forward to within one step of Michael and Mary, who were standing there close together, as though attached.
Haltingly he said, "Go. Please go. Out onto the Earth—to die. You will die. The Earth is dead out there. You'll never see the city or your people again."
"We want a ground car," said Michael. "And supplies."
"A ground car," repeated the President. "And—supplies.... Yes."
"You can give us an escort, if you want to, out beyond the first range of mountains."
"There will be no escort," said the President firmly. "No one has been allowed to go out upon the Earth or to fly above it for many hundreds of years. We know it's there. That's enough. We couldn't bear the sight of it." He took a step back. "And we can't bear the sight of you any longer. Go now. Quickly!"
Michael and Mary did not let go of the lockets as they watched the half circle of faces move backward, staring, as though at corpses that should sink to the floor.
It was night. The city had been lost beyond the dead mounds of Earth that rolled away behind them, like a thousand ancient tombs. The ground car sat still on a crumbling road.
Looking up through the car's driving blister, they saw the stars sunk into the blue black ocean of space; saw the path of the Milky Way along which they had rushed, while they had been searching frantically for the place of salvation.
"If any one of the other couples had made it back," said Mary, "do you think they'd be with us?"
"I think they'd either be with us," he said, "or out in space again—or in prison."
She stared ahead along the beam of headlight that stabbed out into the night over the decaying road.
"How sorry are you," she said quietly, "coming with me?"
"All I know is, if I were out in space for long without you, I'd kill myself."
"Are we going to die out here, Michael?" she said, gesturing toward the wall of night that stood at the end of the headlight, "with the land?"
He turned from her, frowning, and drove the ground car forward, watching the headlights push back the darkness.
They followed the crumbling highway all night until light crept across the bald and cracked hills. The morning sun looked down upon the desolation ten feet above the horizon when the car stopped. They sat for a long time then, looking out upon the Earth's parched and inflamed skin. In the distance a wall of mountains rose like a great pile of bleached bones. Close ahead the rolling plains were motionless waves of dead Earth with a slight breeze stirring up little swirls of dust.
"I'm getting out," she said.
"I haven't the slightest idea how much farther to go, or why," said Michael shrugging. "It's all the same. Dirt and hills and mountains and sun and dust. It's really not much different from being out in space. We live in the car just like in a space ship. We've enough concentrated supplies to last for a year. How far do we go? Why? When?"
They stepped upon the Earth and felt the warmth of the sun and strolled toward the top of the hill.
"The air smells clean," he said.
"The ground feels good. I think I'll take off my shoes." She did.
"Take off your boots, Michael. Try it."
Wearily he pulled off his boots, stood in his bare feet. "It takes me back."
"Yes," she said and began walking toward the hilltop.
He followed, his boots slung around his neck. "There was a road somewhere, with the dust between my toes. Or was it a dream?"
"I guess when the past is old enough," she said, "it becomes a dream."
He watched her footprints in the dust. "God, listen to the quiet."
"I can't seem to remember so much quiet around me. There's always been the sound of a space ship, or the pumps back in the cities."
He did not answer but continued to watch her footsteps and to feel the dust squishing up between his toes. Then suddenly:
"Mary!"
She stopped, whirling around.
He was staring down at her feet.
She followed his gaze.
"It's grass!" He bent down. "Three blades."
She knelt beside him. They touched the green blades.
"They're new," he said.
They stared, like religious devotees concentrating upon some sacred object.
He rose, pulling her up with him. They hurried to the top of the hill and stood very still, looking down into a valley. There were tiny patches of green and little trees sprouting, and here and there, a pale flower. The green was in a cluster, in the center of the valley and there was a tiny glint of sunlight in its center.
"Oh!"
Her hand found his.
They ran down the gentle slope, feeling the patches of green touch their feet, smelling a new freshness in the air. And coming to the little spring, they stood beside it and watched the crystal water that trickled along the valley floor and lost itself around a bend. They saw a furry, little animal scurry away and heard the twitter of a bird and saw it resting on a slim, bending branch. They heard the buzz of a bee, saw it light on a pale flower at their feet and work at the sweetness inside.
Mary knelt down and drank from the spring.
"It's so cool. It must come from deep down."
"It does," he said. There were tears in his eyes and a tightness in his throat. "From deep down."
"We can live here, Michael!"
Slowly he looked all around until his sight stopped at the bottom of a hill. "We'll build our house just beyond those rocks. We'll dig and plant and you'll have the child."
"Yes!" she said. "Oh yes!"
"And the ones back in the city will know the Earth again. Sometime we'll lead them back here and show them the Earth is coming alive." He paused. "By following what we had to do for ourselves, we've found a way to save them."
They remained kneeling in the silence beside the pool for a long time. They felt the sun on their backs and looked into the clean depth of the water deeply aware of the new life breathing all around them and of themselves absorbing it, and at the same time giving back to it the life that was their own.
There was only this quiet and breathing and warmth until Michael stood and picked up a rock and walked toward the base of the hill where he had decided to build the house.
... THE END
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Describe the relationship between Kevin and his mother
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Jack of No Trades by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
Question:
Describe the relationship between Kevin and his mother
Answer:
|
[
"Kevin's mother is a psychiatrist, but she does not want to diagnose her own family member, so she has to entrust Kevin's care to people outside the household. There is a lot of tension between Kevin and his mother at the beginning of the story, and she feels sorry for him whenever he feels hope for the future. It seems that the family knows she can feel the specific thoughts but they don't think she can necessarily where they're coming from, and doesn't have context for these feelings. Even though he is slower at some things than his siblings, his mom encourages him to get trained for first-aid once they know a war is coming; in some sense, he finally has a chance to directly contribute to society, according to his mom, and wouldn't be useless anymore. She also thinks he might have an advantage since he won't feel the others' pain as much. After Kevin finds out that he does have powers, his mom seems to be trying to make up for lost time, trying to bond with him, because she recognizes him as useful now, and is no longer indifferent (or even directly mean) towards him. \n",
"Kevin's mother is a psychiatrist at the Psycho Center with strong telepathic ability. She can read Kevin's mind from the kitchen when he is sitting in the dining room. Although Kevin's mother clearly harbors a bias against psi-deficient people, she also rejects some of the technological advancements of the new society, including the robocooks. Instead, she prefers to cook her own food. Like Kevin's other family members, Kevin's mother walks on eggshells around Kevin, never really truly engaging with him other than to remind the other children to not insult him for his deficiency. As a psychiatrist, his mother won't officially diagnose Kevin herself, but she wants him to make an appointment at the Psycho Center to help him because better adjusted to society. Kevin becomes emotionally disconnected from other people thanks to his own parents' emotional distance from him, and this lack of communication leads them to not understand each other very well. When Earth begins to anticipate war with the aliens from planets near Alpha Centauri, Kevin's mother orders him to train in first-aid in order to contribute. Since the world lacks hospitals because of the exponential decrease in sickness and disease, they have to turn the Psycho Center into a makeshift hospital. This is where Kevin discovers his power to heal people by touching them with his hands. When his mother witnesses his new ability, she is proud to call him her son and reminds him that the leaders of the old world had a similar ability. This encourages Kevin to use his newly-found power for the good of humanity.",
"Kevin’s mother (Amy) reluctantly accepts that her son lacks supernatural (psi-power) abilities after he undergoes all possible medical tests and psychological evaluations. Kev feels disconnected and like a disappointment to his mother and the rest of his family. His mother is telepathic, and uses this power to probe Kev’s mind and read his thoughts without permission. She encourages Kev to not get his hopes up when Tim, his prognosticating brother, declares that Kev must have a psi-power they have not discovered a test for yet. When the potential for alien attack becomes apparent and she decides to train as many medics as possible to treat casualties, she surprises herself by choosing to bring Kev along because it is a job even someone without powers can do. \nTheir relationship totally changes when Kevin discovers his psi-power of healing - the greatest gift of all. When his mother witnesses him healing a casualty of the alien attack for the first time at the Psycho Center, she is shocked and apologizes for ever doubting Kevin. She tells him that he has a gift, and looks at him with a pride that he has not before felt from her.\n",
"Kevin’s mother, Amy, is a psychiatrist and a deep-probe telepath, meaning she only has to glance at Kevin to read exactly what’s passing through his mind at that moment. Since Kevin is psi-deficient and her only child to be that way, their relationship is rather strained. The rest of her children are very talented individuals and hold important jobs, even the youngest Tim. Kevin, on the other hand, works at home watching over the machines that do the housework for them. In some ways, Amy both resents and pities him for his lack of powers. \nKevin feels the tension and acts out because of it. As can be seen at the breakfast table, he feels violated by his mother’s ability and his inability to defend himself against her. As well, she clearly has no sympathy for his cause and tells him to make himself useful when the war comes. He trains in first-aid, but at the sight of his first patient who had half his face ripped off, he tries to run away. His mother stops him and scolds him, claiming that if all the telepaths can handle the pain, he can at least look at him. He heals him with his touch and discovers his psi-power. Soon, Kevin becomes the most important man in the world thanks to his healing ability and is irreplaceable in the war. \n"
] |
49838
|
Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
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Describe Tim's role in the family.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Jack of No Trades by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
Question:
Describe Tim's role in the family.
Answer:
|
[
"Tim is Kevin's youngest brother, and works as a meteorologist for the Weather Bureau. His ability is that of prognostication, meaning he is able to predict certain things about the future. This includes positive and negative things. For instance, at the beginning of the story, he feels a sense of impending doom. At the same time, he is the only one who has a positive outlook on Kevin's situation: he suspects that Kevin has a power that hasn't been discovered or isn't well-understood yet, but the rest of the family (including Kevin himself) figure that he doesn't have any special abilities at all. This is particularly contrasted with Kevin's mother, who doesn't ever speak highly of Kevin. Tim's encouragement gives Kevin hope for his own future regularly, and it helps him to know that someone is nice to him and doesn't think he is useless. ",
"Tim is the youngest brother in the family, and he has the unique gift of prognostication. Because of his ability to see into the future, Tim has gainful employment with the Weather Bureau. Compared to the rest of the family, Tim treats Kevin kindly and tells him that he believes he does have some special power; society simply hasn't developed a test to identify it yet. At breakfast, Tim also feels a sense of ominousness surrounding Kevin, which foreshadows the alien war that happens after the discovery of the Earth-like planets around Alpha Centauri and Kevin's important role in it. Because of his training in first-aid, Kevin works to help those injured in the war, and in the process, he discovers his ability to physically heal people with a simple touch of his hands. Tim's prediction that Kevin would discover his innate power gave Kevin hope and also came true.",
"Tim has the supernatural power of prognostication, and quickly rose to a high position as a meteorologist at the Weather Bureau. He has the same looks as the other men of the Faraday family - big and blond. \nTim defends Kev in the family when the rest of the siblings are picking on him about not having any supernatural powers (“psi-powers”). Tim says Kev must have a power they haven’t learned to test for yet, giving Kev a little boost of hope. Tim has a nagging sense that Kev has an ability they haven’t discovered yet and senses an ominousness in his future. Because of Tim’s supernatural ability to forecast the future, he foreshadows the discovery of Kev’s ability to heal.\n",
"Tim is the youngest of the Faraday family, but his power and talent are still remarkable, perhaps even more so due to his age. Like his brothers and his father, Tim is blonde and large and looked older than his siblings. Tim is a prognosticator, meaning he is able to sense things in the future. He works at the Weather Bureau and quickly rose to the top thanks to his supernatural ability. \nTim is the peacekeeper in the family. His foreboding senses told him long ago that Kevin has psi-powers, they just hadn’t been discovered that. Tim’s predictions give Kevin hope and keep him from going crazy. As well, he seems like the least dramatic of all the siblings and knows how to de-escalate any situation. \n"
] |
49838
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Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
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Describe the circumstances that led to Kevin's power not being discovered until he was twenty-six years old.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Jack of No Trades by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
Question:
Describe the circumstances that led to Kevin's power not being discovered until he was twenty-six years old.
Answer:
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[
"n the year 2102, when this story takes place, 95% of the population has psi-powers. Because of the advancement of technology and medicine, physical ailments are easily and quickly remedied. There is even a cure-all that can heal most things, so it is not often that sickness or injury is relevant to life in the society that Kevin and his family live in. However, everything changes when an alien race from Alpha Centauri wages war on the humans. Unknown weapons mean unknown damage, and injury is out of the humans' control. Because Kevin does not have any psi-powers, he is encouraged to learn first aid so that he can be useful during the war. He is expected to be especially good at first aid because he does not feel the emotions of the injured in the way that telepaths do, and thus he should be able to stay more level-headed. However, he is even more effective in first aid that anyone imagined, because when he touches an injured person they heal almost instantaneously. What usually takes days with cure-all is achieved in mere seconds with a touch of Kevin's hand. It is not only the lack of violence that led to Kevin's power going unnoticed: he is the only person in the world with his powers, which makes it incredibly rare, instead of just being a power that nobody was looking for. ",
"Hundreds of years prior to the action of the story, human experimentation with nuclear energy released radiation into the air that caused people to develop psi powers, turning them \"into a race of supermen.\" By 2102, the year the story takes place, most people have some kind of unique ability, the most common of which is telepathy. This quality, coupled with the fact that viral disease and sickness have largely been eradicated, has led to the creation of a well-ordered society unused to violence and large-scale suffering. There are places called \"cure-alls\", which help people with physical ailments, but since such issues are rare, cure-alls are also limited. There are transplants and grafts for things like missing arms and legs in this new world, but there is no such treatment for psi-deficiencies. As a psi-negative, Kevin feels like an outcast in his family and in society in general. He struggles to understand what his purpose is until war comes to Earth in the form of a hostile group of aliens from two newly-discovered planets near Alpha Centauri. Kevin trains in first-aid in order to offer assistance to the war-wounded, and in the process, he discovers he has the ability to heal people physically by simply touching them with his hands.",
"In the story, Earth had not had war in well over a hundred years and all viruses had been eradicated. The planet was peaceful because there were so many telepaths that there was no longer any capacity for war or crime. Humans started showing these supernatural powers around the 1960s when nuclear energy was being developed. The powers were present, but latent, in humans until brought to life by nuclear radiation. \nBecause Earth was such a peaceful place, attending medical casualties was rare and it was never a career that Kevin had the opportunity to explore. However, after humans discover two earth-like planets in Alpha Centauri and the aliens retaliate and attack Earth, casualties start rolling into the town the Faraday family lives in. Kevin is prepared since he was rapidly trained in the field of medicine on the insistence of his mother who recognized that there would not be enough people with the relevant medical knowledge to treat war casualties should the aliens attack. However, Kevin tries to run away at the first sight of a gaping wound. His mother forces him to stay, and he reluctantly begins shakily sponging the wound of a victim missing half of their face with water. He accidentally drops the sponge and plunges his fingers into the wound, disgusting him greatly. His mother notices immediately that Kevin has healed the wounds completely without scarring. This is the first discovery of Kevin’s psi-power of healing, and he is the only person on Earth to have this ability. If it weren’t for the aliens attacking Earth and creating many casualties, Kevin would not have discovered his extremely rare psi-power.\n",
"Kevin’s long-undiscovered power is healing, which was largely useless in their society. The cure-all was invented before his birth and advanced technology meant illness, disease, and injuries were few and far between. If someone were injured or ill, they were taken to the health center in another town that contained a cure-all machine. This machine could cure anything within a few days. Frankly, his powers were not needed until the war came around. Since he did not grow up around physically hurt people, he was unable to discover his power until he placed his hands on an injured soldier. "
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49838
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Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Jack of No Trades by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"This story takes place in the year 2102 and centers around a family with powers, including telekenisis and teleportation. The narrator is Kevin, one of the sons: he is the only person in the family without powers, a \"psi-deficient\", so he stays at home to take care of the house. The story starts at the breakfast table, where the father teleports in, the mother probes the others' thoughts, and there is grumbling about the goings-on in the household. Timothy, the youngest brother, senses turmoil in the family but is also the most hopeful--he figures that Kevin has a gift they just haven't discovered yet, which is encouraging to Kevin. After everyone else in the family leaves for their jobs, Kevin is left to think about his situation, so he goes for a long walk. Reading is his only other real source of entertainment; he doesn't have many friends because nobody wanted to play sports with someone without telepathic abilities. He couldn't explore space because other planets weren't habitable, so he wondered what would make him stand out. The reader learns that the psi powers were latent in humans and developed with exposure to nuclear energy. When he gets home from his walk, Kevin's entire family is there, processing some news. There are two inhabited planets in Alpha Centauri, and the aliens there might be preparing for war. Kevin partly hoped there would be war for a change of pace, and his mom figured people should start learning first-aid, including Kevin. He had a benefit over his sister because he couldn't sense others' pain in the same way. He met a girl named Lucy in his first-aid class who he liked, and she was a \"low-grade telesensitive\" so he didn't have to worry about his thoughts being read. Once the aliens attacked, things got hard as Kevin had to face the injured people bought to his care. This was especially shocking because injury was not common in his world. This was where Kevin finally found his power: touching the injured people healed them almost instantly. It turned out he was the only human with this power, which was invaluable -- a hospital was even built just for Kevin to work in, where Lucy became his assistant. All at once, he became the most important human on the planet, but the humans had to hide this from their alien adversaries. Lucy was jealous of Kevin but also worried about what would happen to Kevin when the war ended, which it eventually did four months later. The story ends with Kevin returning home after the Vice President informed him that his services were no longer needed. ",
"Kevin Faraday is psi-deficient in a family of five with special psi powers living in a world largely free of disease and conflict. His father is telepathic and uses this ability to help him get to long-distance appointments as a traveling salesman. His middle brother, Danny, has the power of telekinesis and works as a junior partner in a moving company. Kevin's sister, Sylvia, can sense emotions in people, so she is able to tell when he purposefully intensifies his anger to make her feel uncomfortable. The youngest of the family is Timothy, who works as a weather forecaster thanks to his powerful gift of prognostication. Kevin's mother is a psychiatrist with telepathic powers that she uses to read his mind. In fact, most people in the world have some kind of telepathic powers--they can read the minds of others unprotected by mind shields. While the rest of the family treats him awkwardly and goes off to their respective jobs every day, Kevin stays at home to maintain the house. However, even this task makes him feel largely useless because most of the chores can be completed by household machines. Therefore, Kevin spends much of his time daydreaming about what life would have been like for him had he been living in 1960 instead of 2102. He feels a stronger empathy for dying plants than he does for other humans, and this has given him the reputation of callousness. Although Kevin is largely resigned to his fate as a psi-deficient in a world of people with special powers, his brother Tim insists that he has some ability; it simply hasn't been discovered yet. The rest of the family shrugs off this notion, but Kevin secretly latches onto this hope. Because of his inability to tap into the telepathically-broadcast news transmissions, Kevin's family one day alerts him that a starship has returned to Earth from Alpha Centauri, where its crew had discovered two Earth-type planets. This excites Kevin, but unfortunately, the inhabitants of these planets are hostile, and they eventually make their way to Earth to begin a war. In preparation for the war, Kevin's mother encourages him and Sylvia to learn first-aid techniques at the Psycho Center in order to be ready to help the injured. During his training, Kevin meets a girl named Lucy, who flirts with him and admires his strength. When Kevin gets his first patient, he is shocked to discover that he is able to heal the injured man with a simple touch of his hands. Having discovered his new ability, Kevin sets out to heal as many of the wounded as possible; later, he learns that he is the only psi-negative in the world with this ability. Eventually, he is given his own hospital and hailed as a hero by various dignitaries including the President. When the war ends and the aliens surrender, however, Earth is no longer in need of his services, and he is out of a job again.\n",
"In the year 2102, the Faraday family are setting the table and gathering for a meal together in their home. Humans have supernatural powers (psi-powers) that began to show after nuclear energy was developed in the 1960s, and most of the family have special abilities. Father can teleport, Mother (Amy) is a telepathic psychiatrist, Dan (Danny) can move objects via telekinesis, Sylvia is telesensitive, and Tim can predict the future. Kevin (Kev) has no apparent powers, and feels disconnected and isolated from most of his family because without powers he is of little use to society. The exception is his brother Tim, who suggests that there just isn’t a test yet for the powers that Kev has. His father asks if they should send him to a psychiatrist again, and his mother expresses disappointment at the amount of tests that have been run on Kev with no sign of psi-powers. \nKev is crestfallen that he doesn’t really have any life other than going on long walks and watching the house. He is sad he never had the chance to try exploring space, but by the time he was ten years old humans had already concluded that all the other planets were unsuited to human life. \nThere are television-like telepathic projections in the society called “tellies” that those with psi-powers receive. One day, a tellie reports that space explorers from Earth have found two inhabited Earth-type planets in Alpha Centauri. The aliens chased off the humans in their own spaceships and now it is possible that aliens could attack Earth in less than six months. Kev’s mother decides there will be a lot more people in need of medical training to treat casualties if there is an attack, and recruits Sylvia and Kev to train at the Psycho Center. During training, Kev meets a girl named Lucie who is a poet and they develop a fond relationship with each other. When alien weapons begin striking near their town, the casualties start rolling into the Psycho Center and Kev tries to run away at the first sight of the violent wounds. His mother forces him to stay and work. He is so shaky he can’t hold a sponge to clean the blood off a person that is missing half of their face and drops it, accidentally pushing his fingers into the bloody wound. Touching the wound this way cures it completely. Kev quickly grows into a famous sensation who is able to heal any wounds. He is the only person on Earth with this psi-ability, and there is a special clinic built just for him. Lucie becomes his assistant. Presidents and generals visit him and present him with medals and honors. After four months, the war ends and peace returns to Earth. The Vice President thanks Kev on behalf of the country.\n",
"Kevin is the only member of the Faraday family without psi-powers. His two brothers, sister, mother, and father are all extremely powerful individuals, but he, at the ripe age of 26 years old, had nothing. Because of this, he was considered an outcast and was forced to work in their home instead of in the outside world. People pitied him and looked down on him, which drove him crazy. The story begins at the breakfast table with Danny using his powers to levitate food in and out of the kitchen. Chaos ensues as the orange juice crashes into his sister, Sylvia, who senses Kevin’s displeasure at his brazen use of psi-power. Their father soon appears out of thin air with his briefcase, while his mother strolls down and instantly reads Kevin’s mind, only making him madder. The situation escalates until Tim, the youngest, strolls in and claims that Kevin’s powers have yet to present themselves, which gives Kevin hope. His family leaves for work, and Kevin is left at home alone again. \nKevin watches the servomechanisms as they clean and manage the house. Of course, sometimes they break down and he is needed, but largely he has nothing to do and is bored. In the year 2102, Kevin Faraday was considered useless. He takes a long walk that day, and when he returns home, his family is buzzing with the news. A spaceship returned from Alpha Centauri claiming they ran into inhabitable planets filled with humanoid aliens. One of the aliens followed them back to Earth, then turned around and headed home. They were hostile creatures and attacked them on sight. Earth had six months to prepare for the potential of war, so Kevin and his siblings learned first-aid techniques at the Psycho Center. There, Kevin meets Lucy, a cute blonde poetess who expresses interest in him. \nWhen the first bomb strikes, Kevin is faced with his first injured patient. His face had been blown up in the explosion, and Kevin can’t handle the sight, so he tries to run away. He is stopped by his mother, however, who scolds him and sends him back to his patient. As he is mopping his face with a sponge, his hand slips and he accidentally touches his patient skin-to-skin. Miraculously, his injuries are cured, and Kevin’s powers are finally discovered. He is a healer. \nHe heals the rest of the injured with just a touch and soon becomes the most important man in the world. He gets his own special hospital, where Lucy is his assistant, and visits from Presidents, cabinet members, and other people of power. He heals everyone who is injured in the war and loves the new attention. He is the only healer, and those who had his abilities in the past were kings. \nHowever, four months later, the war ends and the Centaurions blow themselves up in surrender. The story ends with a question: will Kevin still be as needed in a post-war society? \n"
] |
49838
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Jack of No Trades
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy October 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was psick of Psi powers, not having any. Or didn't I? Maybe they'd psee otherwise psomeday!
I walked into the dining room and collided with a floating mass of fabric, which promptly draped itself over me like a sentient shroud.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kevin!" my middle brother's voice came muffled through the folds. "If you can't help, at least don't hinder!"
I managed to struggle out of the tablecloth, even though it seemed to be trying to wrap itself around me. When Danny got excited, he lost his mental grip.
"I could help," I yelled as soon as I got my head free, "if anybody would let me and, what's more, I could set the table a damn sight faster by hand than you do with 'kinesis."
Just then Father appeared at the head of the table. He could as easily have walked downstairs as teleported, but I belonged to a family of exhibitionists. And Father tended to show off as if he were still a kid. Not that he looked his age—he was big and blond, like Danny and Tim and me, and could have passed for our older brother.
"Boys, boys!" he reproved us. "Danny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—picking on poor Kev."
Even if it hadn't been Danny's fault, he would still have been blamed.
Nobody was ever supposed to raise a voice or a hand or a thought to poor afflicted Kev, because nature had picked on me enough. And the nicer everybody was to me, the nastier I became, since only when they lost their tempers could I get—or so I believed—their true attitude toward me.
How else could I tell?
"Sorry, fella," Dan apologized to me. The tablecloth spread itself out on the table. "Wrinkles," he grumbled to himself. "Wrinkles. And I had it so nice and smooth before. Mother will be furious."
"If she were going to be furious, she'd be furious already," Father reminded him sadly. It must be tough to be married to a deep-probe telepath, I thought, and I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for him. It was so seldom I got the chance to feel sorry for anyone except myself.
"But I think you'll find she understands."
"She knows, all right," Danny remarked as he went on into the kitchen,
"but I'm not sure she always understands."
I was surprised to find him so perceptive on the abstract level, because he wasn't what you might call an understanding person, either.
"There are tensions in this room," my sister announced as she slouched in, not quite awake yet, "and hatred. I could feel them all the way upstairs. And today I'm working on the Sleepsweet Mattress copy, so I must feel absolutely tranquil. Everyone will think beautiful thoughts, please."
She sat down just as a glass of orange juice was arriving at her place; Danny apparently didn't know she'd come in already. The glass bumped into the back of her neck, tilted and poured its contents over her shoulder and down her very considerable decolletage. Being a mere primitive, I couldn't help laughing.
"Danny, you fumbler!" she screamed.
Danny erupted from the kitchen. "How many times have I asked all of you not to sit down until I've got everything on the table? Always a lot of interfering busybodies getting in the way."
"I don't see why you have to set the table at all," she retorted. "A robot could do it better and faster than you. Even Kev could." She turned quickly toward me. "Oh, I am sorry, Kevin."
I didn't say anything; I was too busy pressing my hands down on the back of the chair to make my knuckles turn white.
Sylvia's face turned even whiter. "Father, stop him— stop him! He's hating again! I can't stand it!"
Father looked at me, then at her. "I don't think he can help it, Sylvia."
I grinned. "That's right—I'm just a poor atavism with no control over myself a-tall."
Finally my mother came in from the kitchen; she was an old-fashioned woman and didn't hold with robocooks. One quick glance at me gave her the complete details, even though I quickly protested, "It's illegal to probe anyone without permission."
"I used to probe you to find out when you needed your diapers changed," she said tartly, "and I'll probe you now. You should watch yourself, Sylvia—poor Kevin isn't responsible."
She didn't need to probe to get the blast of naked emotion that spurted out from me. My sister screamed and even Father looked uncomfortable. Danny stomped back into the kitchen, muttering to himself.
Mother's lips tightened. "Sylvia, go upstairs and change your dress. Kevin, do I have to make an appointment for you at the clinic again?" A psychiatrist never diagnosed members of his own family—that is, not officially; they couldn't help offering thumbnail diagnoses any more than they could help having thumbnails.
"No use," I said, deciding it was safe to drop into my chair. "Who can adjust me to an environment to which I'm fundamentally unsuited?"
"Maybe there is something physically wrong with him, Amy," my father suggested hopefully. "Maybe you should make an appointment for him at the cure-all?"
Mother shook her neatly coiffed head. "He's been to it dozens of times and he always checks out in splendid shape. None of us can spare the time to go with him again, just on an off-chance, and he could hardly be allowed to make such a long trip all by himself. Pity there isn't a machine in every community, but, then, we don't really need them."
Now that the virus diseases had been licked, people hardly ever got sick any more and, when they did, it was mostly psychosomatic. Life was so well organized that there weren't even many accidents these days. It was a safe, orderly existence for those who fitted into it—which accounted for more than ninety-five per cent of the population. The only ones who didn't adjust were those who couldn't, like me—psi-deficients, throwbacks to an earlier era. There were no physical cripples, because anybody could have a new arm or a new leg grafted on, but you couldn't graft psi powers onto an atavism or, if you could, the technique hadn't been developed yet.
"I feel a sense of impending doom brooding over this household," my youngest brother remarked cheerfully as he vaulted into his chair.
"You always do, Timothy," my mother said, unfolding her napkin. "And I must say it's not in good taste, especially at breakfast."
He reached for his juice. "Guess this is a doomed household. And what was all that emotional uproar about?"
"The usual," Sylvia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. She slid warily into her chair. "Hey, Dan, I'm here!" she called. "If anything else comes in, it comes in manually, understand?"
"Oh, all right." Dan emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food floating ahead of him.
"The usual? Trouble with Kev?" Tim looked at me narrowly. "Somehow my sense of ominousness is connected with him."
"Well, that's perfectly natural—" Sylvia began, then stopped as Mother caught her eye.
"I didn't mean that," Tim said. "I still say Kev's got something we can't figure out."
"You've been saying that for years," Danny protested, "and he's been tested for every faculty under the Sun. He can't telepath or teleport or telekinesthesize or even teletype. He can't precognize or prefix or prepossess. He can't—"
"Strictly a bundle of no-talent, that's me," I interrupted, trying to keep my animal feelings from getting the better of me. That was how my family thought of me, I knew—as an animal, and not a very lovable one, either.
"No," Tim said, "he's just got something we haven't developed a test for. It'll come out some day, you'll see." He smiled at me.
I smiled at him gratefully; he was the only member of my family who really seemed to like me in spite of my handicap. "It won't work, Tim. I know you're trying to be kind, but—"
"He's not saying it just to be kind," my mother put in. "He means it. Not that I want to arouse false hopes, Kevin," she added with grim scrupulousness. "Tim's awfully young yet and I wouldn't trust his extracurricular prognostications too far."
Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a feeble renewal of old hopes. After all, young or not, Tim was a hell of a good prognosticator; he wouldn't have risen so rapidly to the position he held in the Weather Bureau if he hadn't been pretty near tops in foreboding.
Mother smiled sadly at my thoughts, but I didn't let that discourage me. As Danny had said, she knew but she didn't really understand . Nobody, for all of his or her psi power, really understood me.
Breakfast was finally over and the rest of my family dispersed to their various jobs. Father simply took his briefcase and disappeared—he was a traveling salesman and he had a morning appointment clear across the continent. The others, not having his particular gift, had to take the helibus to their different destinations. Mother, as I said, was a psychiatrist. Sylvia wrote advertising copy. Tim was a meteorologist. Dan was a junior executive in a furniture moving company and expected a promotion to senior rank as soon as he achieved a better mental grip on pianos.
Only I had no job, no profession, no place in life. Of course there were certain menial tasks a psi-negative could perform, but my parents would have none of them—partly for my sake, but mostly for the sake of their own community standing.
"We don't need what little money Kev could bring in," my father always said. "I can afford to support my family. He can stay home and take care of the house."
And that's what I did. Not that there was much to do except call a techno whenever one of the servomechanisms missed a beat. True enough, those things had to be watched mighty carefully because, if they broke down, it sometimes took days before the repair and/or replacement robots could come. There never were enough of them because ours was a constructive society. Still, being a machine-sitter isn't very much of a career. And every function that wasn't the prerogative of a machine could be done ten times more quickly and efficiently by some member of my family than I could do it. If I went ahead and did something anyway, they would just do it all over again when they got home.
So I had nothing to do all day. I had a special dispensation to take books out of the local Archives, because I was a deficient and couldn't receive the tellie programs. Almost everybody on Earth was telepathic to some degree and could get the amplified projections even if he couldn't transmit or receive with his natural powers. But I got nothing. I had to derive all my recreation from reading, and you can get awfully tired of books, especially when they're all at least a hundred years old and written by primitives. I could borrow sound tapes, but they also bored me after a while.
I thought maybe I could develop a talent for composing or painting, which would classify me as a telesensitive—artistic ability being considered as the oldest, if least important, psi power—but I couldn't even do anything like that.
About all there was left for me was to take long walks. Athletics were out of the question; I couldn't compete with psi-boys and they didn't want to compete with me. All the people in the neighborhood knew me and were nice to me, but I didn't need to be a 'path to tell what they were saying to one another when I hove into sight. "There's that oldest Faraday boy. Pity, such a talented family, to have a defective."
I didn't have a girl, either. Although some of them were sort of attracted to me—I could see that—they could hardly go out with me without exposing themselves to ridicule. In their sandals, I would have done the same thing, but that didn't stop me from hating them.
I wished I had been born a couple of hundred years ago—before people started playing around with nuclear energy and filling the air with radiations that they were afraid would turn human beings into hideous monsters. Instead, they developed the psi powers that had always been latent in the species until we developed into a race of supermen. I don't know why I say we —in 1960 or so, I might have been considered superior, but in 2102 I was just the Faradays' idiot boy.
Exploring space should have been my hope. If there had been anything useful or interesting on any of the other planets, I might have found a niche for myself there. In totally new surroundings, the psi powers geared to another environment might not be an advantage. But by the time I was ten, it was discovered that the other planets were just barren hunks of rock, with pressures and climates and atmospheres drastically unsuited to human life. A year or so before, the hyperdrive had been developed on Earth and ships had been sent out to explore the stars, but I had no hope left in that direction any more.
I was an atavism in a world of peace and plenty. Peace, because people couldn't indulge in war or even crime with so many telepaths running around—not because, I told myself, the capacity for primitive behavior wasn't just as latent in everybody else as the psi talent seemed latent in me. Tim must be right, I thought—I must have some undreamed-of power that only the right circumstances would bring out. But what was that power?
For years I had speculated on what my potential talent might be, explored every wild possibility I could conceive of and found none productive of even an ambiguous result with which I could fool myself. As I approached adulthood, I began to concede that I was probably nothing more than what I seemed to be—a simple psi-negative. Yet, from time to time, hope surged up again, as it had today, in spite of my knowledge that my hope was an impossibility. Who ever heard of latent psi powers showing themselves in an individual as old as twenty-six?
I was almost alone in the parks where I used to walk, because people liked to commune with one another those days rather than with nature. Even gardening had very little popularity. But I found myself most at home in those woodland—or, rather, pseudo-woodland—surroundings, able to identify more readily with the trees and flowers than I could with my own kind. A fallen tree or a broken blossom would excite more sympathy from me than the minor catastrophes that will beset any household, no matter how gifted, and I would shy away from bloody noses or cut fingers, thus giving myself a reputation for callousness as well as extrasensory imbecility.
However, I was no more callous in steering clear of human breakdowns than I was in not shedding tears over the household machines when they broke down, for I felt no more closely akin to my parents and siblings than I did to the mechanisms that served and, sometimes, failed us.
On that day, I walked farther than I had intended and, by the time I got back home, I found the rest of my family had returned before me. They seemed to be excited about something and were surprised to see me so calm.
"Aren't you even interested in anything outside your own immediate concerns, Kev?" Sylvia demanded, despite Father's efforts to shush her.
"Can't you remember that Kev isn't able to receive the tellies?" Tim shot back at her. "He probably doesn't even know what's happened."
"Well, what did happen?" I asked, trying not to snap.
"One starship got back from Alpha Centauri," Danny said excitedly.
"There are two inhabited Earth-type planets there!"
This was for me; this was it at last! I tried not to show my enthusiasm, though I knew that was futile. My relatives could keep their thoughts and emotions from me; I couldn't keep mine from them.
"What kind of life inhabits them? Humanoid?"
"Uh-uh." Danny shook his head. "And hostile. The crew of the starship says they were attacked immediately on landing. When they turned and left, they were followed here by one of the alien ships. Must be a pretty advanced race to have spaceships. Anyhow, the extraterrestrial ship headed back as soon as it got a fix on where ours was going."
"But if they're hostile," I said thoughtfully, "it might mean war."
"Of course. That's why everybody's so wrought up. We hope it's peace, but we'll have to prepare for war just in case."
There hadn't been a war on Earth for well over a hundred years, but we hadn't been so foolish as to obliterate all knowledge of military techniques and weapons. The alien ship wouldn't be able to come back with reinforcements—if such were its intention—in less than six months. This meant time to get together a stockpile of weapons, though we had no idea of how effective our defenses would be against the aliens' armament.
They might have strange and terrible weapons against which we would be powerless. On the other hand, our side would have the benefits of telekinetically guided missiles, teleported saboteurs, telepaths to pick up the alien strategy, and prognosticators to determine the outcome of each battle and see whether it was worth fighting in the first place.
Everybody on Earth hoped for peace. Everybody, that is, except me. I had been unable to achieve any sense of identity with the world in which I lived, and it was almost worth the loss of personal survival to know that my own smug species could look silly against a still more talented race.
"It isn't so much our defense that worries me," my mother muttered, "as lack of adequate medical machinery. War is bound to mean casualties and there aren't enough cure-alls on the planet to take care of them. It's useless to expect the government to build more right now; they'll be too busy producing weapons. Sylvia, you'd better take a leave of absence from your job and come down to Psycho Center to learn first-aid techniques. And you too, Kevin," she added, obviously a little surprised herself at what she was saying. "Probably you'd be even better at it than Sylvia since you aren't sensitive to other people's pain."
I looked at her.
"It is an ill wind," she agreed, smiling wryly, "but don't let me catch you thinking that way, Kevin. Can't you see it would be better that there should be no war and you should remain useless?"
I couldn't see it, of course, and she knew that, with her wretched talent for stripping away my feeble attempts at privacy. Psi-powers usually included some ability to form a mental shield; being without one, I was necessarily devoid of the other.
My attitude didn't matter, though, because it was definitely war. The aliens came back with a fleet clearly bent on our annihilation—even the 'paths couldn't figure out their motives, for the thought pattern was entirely different from ours—and the war was on.
I had enjoyed learning first-aid; it was the first time I had ever worked with people as an equal. And I was good at it because psi-powers aren't much of an advantage there. Telekinesis maybe a little, but I was big enough to lift anybody without needing any superhuman abilities—normal human abilities, rather.
"Gee, Mr. Faraday," one of the other students breathed, "you're so strong. And without 'kinesis or anything."
I looked at her and liked what I saw. She was blonde and pretty. "My name's not Mr. Faraday," I said. "It's Kevin."
"My name's Lucy," she giggled.
No girl had ever giggled at me in that way before. Immediately I started to envision a beautiful future for the two of us, then flushed when I realized that she might be a telepath. But she was winding a tourniquet around the arm of another member of the class with apparent unconcern.
"Hey, quit that!" the windee yelled. "You're making it too tight! I'll be mortified!"
So Lucy was obviously not a telepath. Later I found out she was only a low-grade telesensitive—just a poetess—so I had nothing to worry about as far as having my thoughts read went. I was a little afraid of Sylvia's kidding me about my first romance, but, as it happened, she got interested in one of the guys who was taking the class with us, and she was not only too busy to be bothered with me, but in too vulnerable a position herself.
However, when the actual bombs—or their alien equivalent—struck near our town, I wasn't nearly so happy, especially after they started carrying the wounded into the Psycho Center, which had been turned into a hospital for the duration. I took one look at the gory scene—I had never seen anybody really injured before; few people had, as a matter of fact—and started for the door. But Mother was already blocking the way. It was easy to see from which side of the family Tim had got his talent for prognostication.
"If the telepaths who can pick up all the pain can stand this, Kevin," she said, " you certainly can." And there was no kindness at all in the you .
She gave me a shove toward the nearest stretcher. "Go on—now's your chance to show you're of some use in this world."
Gritting my teeth, I turned to the man on the stretcher. Something had pretty near torn half his face away. It was all there, but not in the right place, and it wasn't pretty. I turned away, caught my mother's eye, and then I didn't even dare to throw up. I looked at that smashed face again and all the first-aid lessons I'd had flew out of my head as if some super-psi had plucked them from me.
The man was bleeding terribly. I had never seen blood pouring out like that before. The first thing to do, I figured sickly, was mop it up. I wet a sponge and dabbed gingerly at the face, but my hands were shaking so hard that the sponge slipped and my fingers were on the raw gaping wound. I could feel the warm viscosity of the blood and nothing, not even my mother, could keep my meal down this time, I thought.
Mother had uttered a sound of exasperation as I dropped the sponge. I could hear her coming toward me. Then I heard her gasp. I looked at my patient and my mouth dropped open. For suddenly there was no wound, no wound at all—just a little blood and the fellow's face was whole again. Not even a scar.
"Wha—wha happened?" he asked. "It doesn't hurt any more!"
He touched his cheek and looked up at me with frightened eyes. And I was frightened, too—too frightened to be sick, too frightened to do anything but stare witlessly at him.
"Touch some of the others, quick!" my mother commanded, pushing astounded attendants away from stretchers.
I touched broken limbs and torn bodies and shattered heads, and they were whole again right away. Everybody in the room was looking at me in the way I had always dreamed of being looked at. Lucy was opening and shutting her beautiful mouth like a beautiful fish. In fact, the whole thing was just like a dream, except that I was awake. I couldn't have imagined all those horrors.
But the horrors soon weren't horrors any more. I began to find them almost pleasing; the worse a wound was, the more I appreciated it. There was so much more satisfaction, virtually an esthetic thrill, in seeing a horrible jagged tear smooth away, heal, not in days, as it would have done under the cure-all, but in seconds.
"Timothy was right," my mother said, her eyes filled with tears, "and I was wrong ever to have doubted. You have a gift, son—" and she said the word son loud and clear so that everybody could hear it—"the greatest gift of all, that of healing." She looked at me proudly. And Lucy and the others looked at me as if I were a god or something.
I felt ... well, good.
"I wonder why we never thought of healing as a potential psi-power," my mother said to me later, when I was catching a snatch of rest and she was lighting cigarettes and offering me cups of coffee in an attempt to make up twenty-six years of indifference, perhaps dislike, all at once.
"The ability to heal is recorded in history, only we never paid much attention to it."
"Recorded?" I asked, a little jealously.
"Of course," she smiled. "Remember the King's Evil?"
I should have known without her reminding me, after all the old books I had read. "Scrofula, wasn't it? They called it that because the touch of certain kings was supposed to cure it ... and other diseases, too, I guess."
She nodded. "Certain people must have had the healing power and that's probably why they originally got to be the rulers."
In a very short time, I became a pretty important person. All the other deficients in the world were tested for the healing power and all of them turned out negative. I proved to be the only human healer alive, and not only that, I could work a thousand times more efficiently and effectively than any of the machines. The government built a hospital just for my work! Wounded people were ferried there from all over the world and I cured them. I could do practically everything except raise the dead and sometimes I wondered whether, with a little practice, I wouldn't be able to do even that.
When I came to my new office, whom did I find waiting there for me but Lucy, her trim figure enhanced by a snug blue and white uniform. "I'm your assistant, Kev," she said shyly.
I looked at her. "You are?"
"I—I hope you want me," she went on, coyness now mixing with apprehension.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I do want you, Lucy. More than I can tell you now. After all this is over, there's something more I want to say. But right now—" I clapped her arm—"there's a job to be done."
"Yes, Kevin," she said, glaring at me for some reason I didn't have time to investigate or interpret at the moment. My patients were waiting for me.
They gave me everything else I could possibly need, except enough sleep, and I myself didn't want that. I wanted to heal. I wanted to show my fellow human beings that, though I couldn't receive or transmit thoughts or foretell the future or move things with my mind, all those powers were useless without life, and that was what I could give.
I took pride in my work. It was good to stop pain and ugliness, to know that, if it weren't for me, these people would be dead or permanently disfigured. In a sense, they were—well, my children; I felt a warm glow of affection toward them.
They felt the same way toward me. I knew because the secret of the hospital soon leaked out—during all those years of peace, the government had lost whatever facility it had for keeping secrets—and people used to come in droves, hoping for a glimpse of me.
The government pointed out that such crowds outside the building might attract the enemy's attention. I was the most important individual on Earth, they told my followers, and my safety couldn't be risked. The human race at this stage was pretty docile. The crowds went away. And it was right that they should; I didn't want to be risked any more than they wanted to risk me.
Plenty of people did come to see me officially—the President, generals, all kinds of big wheels, bringing citations, medals and other obsolete honors they'd revived primarily for me. It was wonderful. I began to love everybody.
"Don't you think you're putting too much of yourself into this, Kev?" Lucy asked me one day.
I gave her an incredulous glance. "You mean I shouldn't help people?"
"Of course you should help them. I didn't mean anything like that. Just ... well, you're getting too bound up in your work."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Then the truth, as I thought, dawned on me. "Are you jealous, Lucy?"
She lowered her eyes. "Not only that, but the war's bound to come to an end, you know, and—"
It was the first part of her sentence that interested me. "Why, do you mean—"
And just then a fresh batch of casualties arrived and I had to tend to them. For the next few days, I was so busy, I didn't get the chance to have the long talk with Lucy I'd wanted....
Then, after only four months, the war suddenly stopped. It seemed that the aliens' weapons, despite their undeniable mysteriousness, were not equal to ours. And they had the added disadvantage of being light-years away from home base. So the remnant of their fleet took off and blew itself up just outside of Mars, which we understood to be the equivalent of unconditional surrender. And it was; we never heard from the Centaurians again.
Peace once more. I had a little mopping up to do at the hospital; then I collected my possessions and went back home after a dignitary—only the Vice President this time—had thanked me on behalf of a grateful country. I wasn't needed any more.
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Why does Steffens decide to engage with the robots?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Orphans of the Void by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
Question:
Why does Steffens decide to engage with the robots?
Answer:
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"Steffens was stumped as to what to do when they visually discovered robots on the Third planet. He proactively sounded an alert and put defense screens on the ship, but wondered about what his governing League Law would have him do.\nContact with races on foreign planets was forbidden, but he was unsure if robots could be called a race. Earth didn’t have robots because imaginative robots were expressly forbidden to build. Steffens thought it was possible the robots were the brains of natives encased in metal.\nSince Steffens is under “The Mapping Command”, he is supposed to go no further than examining unexplored systems, checking for life-forms and the possibilities of human colonization. His conundrum was that, “if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.”\nThe robots reach out telepathically, saying in words that they are only here to serve, and communicating a photo to the minds of the crew of a robot extending a hand for a handshake. Although Steffens wonders about letting the Alien Contact crew handle the situation, he ultimately decides it is his responsibility - and he goes on to initiate contact by requesting to land. He is encouraged to stay and explore by the kind nature of the robots.\n",
"When Steffens and his crew flew from Tyban IV to check out this other planet, they had no idea that they would find life or even robotic humanoids on this planet. The Mapping Command is simply meant to check off boxes (was there life on this planet? Is it inhabitable for humans?), not to interact with the potential life forms below. However, Steffens is faced with a serious dilemma when he encounters the robots. He has already technically made contact by accident since he flew so close to the surface to investigate the burnt city. Whether or not he interacted with them more or flew away, he would be in trouble with the Commissioner. Contact with races is expressly forbidden, however, he wonders if robots could really be defined as a race since they were more of an invention. So, he decided to learn more about the robots by staying. ",
"At first, Steffens isn't sure if he should engage with the robots because the League Law forbids contact with planet-bound races, but the robots were not necessarily a race. Because Earthmen did not have robots, they were a new type of encounter for him, and he decided that it would be okay since they had effectively already made contact. He isn't even sure if they are native beings with some kind of casing to protect their organs or even just brains from the elements, or if they are entirely robots. In the end, though, it was a Catch-22: if he made contact, he could be breaking the Law of Contact, but if he went back to base without making contact, it could be said that he did not complete his duty. ",
"Steffens decides to engage with the robots because they seem to be openly and graciously inviting the spaceship and its men to visit them. The robots send a friendly greeting, explaining that they do not wish the humans harm and that their only desire is to serve. They also send an image of one of the robots lifting its arm and graciously offering its hand. In addition, since the robots communicate with the humans telepathically, their messages are persuasive, and Steffens feels a strong urge to take the robot’s proffered hand. Another reason he decides to engage with the robots is that while the Law of Contact forbids making contact with life-forms, the robots are not life-forms, and Steffens could very well face a court-martial for dereliction of duty if he does not make contact with them. On top of that, Steffens is immensely curious about the robots and their makers."
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Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
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Describe what the robots are.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Orphans of the Void by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
Question:
Describe what the robots are.
Answer:
|
[
"The robots are the first evidence of an advanced alien race that man has discovered in 300 years of interstellar travel. They are at least a foot shorter than the humans, with an eye-band circling their entire head, bunches of hanging arms, and a gliding type of locomotion. Steffens remarks that they are some of the most well-built machinery he has ever seen. The robots are made of black plastic, and have rows of dense symbols engraved all over their torsos. Their communication comes to the humans telepathically, and they are fully sentient - aware of their life spans of ~55 years, and their time until death. They also have the ability to probe the minds of the humans and even urge them to make certain decisions, but they reveal they only use this to get the humans to land and will not use it further except when given permission.\nThey claim to have been made by the Makers, and exhibit the Factory where they are built to Steffens and his crew while they are on the Third planet. There are more than nine million of them in total on the planet, which astonishes the humans, and they spend their time trying to expand their knowledge to better serve their Makers when they eventually return to the planet. \n",
"The robots are short, black hunks of metal with several arms and legs each. They have a plastic band that circles their head, allowing them to see in every direction. They have a series of symbols that decorate the fronts of their bodies. They are telepathic robots, able to both see into the minds of others as well as communicate with them both in their language and through visual elements. They are, as is often said, built to serve, and they live in a sort of purgatory waiting for their Makers to return home. There are approximately nine million robots currently living on that planet, each with a life span of around 55 years. They are made in the Factory, which was, of course, built by the Makers. There are two types of robots: the normal ones met by Steffens and Ball, as well as the Doctors who are able to heal flesh. ",
"The robots that Steffens spots on the third planet of the star Tyban are small and black with a vision band wrapping around the top, the rest created from black metal, with a number of sturdy legs that put them about a foot shorter than the humans. They have the ability to make the humans on the ship hear thoughts that they relay to them, and can even send images this way, which makes Steffens worry that they have mind-control abilities. They do have the ability to intrude on thoughts. It is clear to Steffens that they were built to serve those around them, and at the initial encounter they do insist that their \"only desire is to serve\". Those that they want to serve are \"the Makers\", presumably the race of people who were on the planet before the city was scorched and destroyed in some kind of radioactive explosion. It is not clear what the robots' role in this part of the history is, just that the chances of their makers coming back to them was probably very low. ",
"The robots were designed by their Makers and produced in their factories which are still operational as there are over nine million of them of various ages and remaining lifespans. They are small, black structures with several hanging arms and legs. They have a band of transparent plastic-like material that runs around their heads; this is presumably their eye, enabling them to see in all directions. A similar round dot of the plastic on top of their heads suggests they can see directly over them. The robots are all identical and have rows of symbols on their torsos. Surprisingly, the robots appear to demonstrate emotion as they seem disappointed when they first meet Steffens, pleased when the ship lands and the crew joins them on the planet, pained when they refer to their Makers who have been gone a long time, and curious about the similarities and differences between themselves and the humans.\nCommunicating telepathically, the robots let Steffens and his crew know that they are designed to serve. It is possible that the robots can control human minds, but they choose not to do so. They let Steffens know that they only reached out to the humans’ minds because they detected that the humans were going to leave, so they decided to communicate some information about themselves so that the humans would stay for a visit. They also indicate that they explored the humans’ minds only enough to be able to contact and communicate with them. The robots understand human thinking: they know how to present themselves as nonthreatening, sending an image of one with an outstretched arm for a handshake and reducing the number of robots that first engage with the humans, so they won’t be overwhelmed or intimidated. They also understand that their silence will draw the humans in after their initial communication and the picture, due to their curiosity. \nLeft to their own devices after their Makers left and didn’t return, the robots engaged in building their knowledge of the natural sciences and mathematics. Their goal is to make themselves even more useful to their Makers when they return. The robots fully expect their Makers to return; otherwise, what would be their purpose?\n"
] |
50827
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Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Orphans of the Void by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story opens in the Coal Sack Nebula, on the uninhabited fourth planet of a star called Tyban. There are twelve 15,000 year old stone buildings on the dusty uninhabitable planet, the first evidence of another advanced space-crossing alien race.\nSteffens and his crew travel to the Third planet in the Tyban solar system which seems uninhabited as well, with the cities obliterated into black holes in the ground that are at least three miles wide. The Third planet is Earth-like, with continents, hills and deserts, and of a suitable temperature for life, but with absolutely no vegetation, deathly radiation for humans, and a CO2 atmosphere. They see splintered walls and wreckage, but no life - until their discovery of the robots. There are nine million black, plastic robots slightly shorter than humans on the planet, and they have a huge, grey block building Factory near the edge of the twilight zone in a valley between two mountains where they are produced. Their desire for their human-like Makers to return to them, and their use of telepathic communication and mind-probing sets an eerie vibe over the humans’ exploration of the planet.\n",
"Orphans of the World by Michael Shaara takes place on two different planets in the Coal Sack Nebula. The first is Tyban IV. There, Steffens and his crew discover the remnants of an ancient, alien civilization from at least over 15,000 years ago. They built stone buildings, worn away with time, out of the native materials sourced on the planet. The next planet they visited was hot and radioactive, absolutely unable to support any humanoid life form. However, when they got closer to the surface, Steffens and his crew noticed a giant hole in the center, charred and burnt. All the buildings within had perished in the explosion and nothing remained but a pile of rubble. The planet itself was hot and dry without any plants or wildlife. There is also a Factory on it, a large, gray building, where the robots are created. ",
"This story takes place in space, where a group of humans is traveling on a ship in the Coal Sack Nebula. The star Tyban is the \"sun\", so to speak, of the relevant planets, and the humans start their journey on the fourth planet of this system, standing in the ruins of a destroyed city that did not leave them many details to learn from. The third planet of the system, one in from the first one they were on, had more information for them. There was a city abandoned much like the one they had found on the fourth planet, but the huge scorch mark that covered the city made it look like its destruction had been very violent. On this third planet, there was no oxygen, a lot of heat, and it didn't seem like it would be able to support any kind of life, especially since it had high levels of radiation. There was a valley with the factory in it, far away from the city. Much to the surprise of the human crew, there is a large swarm of black robots that seem to be the only connection to the planet. ",
"\n\tThe story is set in the Coal Sack Nebula on the dead fourth and third planets of a star named Tyban. The fourth planet, Tyban IV, is only one parsec from Varius II and has 12 stone buildings with no airlocks, despite the thin atmosphere, or inscriptions—any that were made would have presumably been removed by the winds blowing across the planet. The stones themselves have worn smooth, so based on the timeframe for wind erosion on Earth, Captain Steffens estimates the buildings might be 10 to 15 thousand years old. This discovery is significant because humans have been exploring space for 300 years, and this is the first sighting of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. The planet has a sandy surface and a blue-black mid-day sky. Of the other three planets, the inner is too hot for habitation and the outer too heavy and cold. \nThe third planet has a decent temperature range but a carbon dioxide atmosphere. The planet is surrounded by a layer of clouds and a misty gas; it is a heavy planet with no free oxygen, but there are several dead cities, each destroyed by a blast in the center, leaving a deep hole three miles wide and shattered, splintered walls. There is no vegetation, and the planet has lethal radiation levels that would prevent any life. The surface features rocky hills. This planet, however, has millions of active robots produced in a factory that is still operational. The robots have telepathic abilities and communicate with the people on the ship, inviting them to land. The robot factory was built by what the robots refer to as Makers, who have since left the planet and not returned. The robots have the ability to decontaminate the radiation and are slightly radioactive themselves.\n"
] |
50827
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Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
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What is the irony of the “Makers” in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Orphans of the Void by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
Question:
What is the irony of the “Makers” in the story?
Answer:
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[
"The “Makers” are to the robots as gods of creation are to humans. The robots believe that the Makers wouldn’t have created them if they wouldn’t return for them one day, and so steadfastly believe that the Makers will visit. They tell Steffens that the Makers were similar to his human form. This is evidenced by the disappointment the robots display when the humans land and the robots realize they do not communicate telepathically, thus cannot be the Makers they were expecting.\nSteffens states the “ironic parallel” of the Makers at the end of the story because the humans wish to understand who created the robots, but they can’t possibly answer that question because it would be like asking a human who created their god.\n",
"The “Makers” are humanoid aliens from over 15,000 years ago. They built the robots currently living on the radioactive wasteland to serve their every need. However, when their civilization was destroyed in the war, nothing remained of them aside from their robots. The robots idolize their Makers since they quite literally created them as well as the universe they exist in. Steffens draws the parallel between the robots’ Makers and humans’ God. He considers asking them who made the Makers, but then realizes that would be like asking who made God. ",
"The Makers were the race of people who had built the robots that the humans discover in the story. When the humans visit the planet, the robots are the only moving things on the surface: it seems that the Makers were likely destroyed in whatever radioactive explosion destroyed their city. The robots, when probing the minds of the humans, found the idea of the Maker to be the God of Earth, and tried to make connections between the two ideas. Much in the same way, the Maker of any sort had been responsible for building the creatures that lived to serve it. Unfortunately, given the evidence of some kind of war, the humans don't think the Makers are going to return to the planet they are visiting, which means that the robots will be working forever to serve the Makers who they will not see again; that is, they will never meet their makers. Even though their goals are based on self-improvement, they have no way of knowing if the main source of their motivation is even real anymore. It could also easily be confusing, if the humans asked where the Makers came from, because Steffens did not want to confuse the robots by asking them who the God of their own God was, so to speak. ",
"\n\tThe irony of the Makers is that they are the robots’ God and parallel to the human concept of God. Just as human theology holds that God created the universe and humans, in the robots’ understanding, the Makers created them, the planet, and the universe. There are other parallels as well; Christianity teaches that God dwelled among humans in his human form as Jesus. The Makers lived among the robots. Jesus was crucified and dead for three days until he returned to life and the people who knew him. Likewise, the Makers are gone, yet the robots fully expect them to return. Human theology teaches that God created humans to worship him and serve him; the Makers created the robots to serve them. In the absence of their Makers, the robots expectantly await their return just as Christians await the second coming of Jesus.\n\tFurthermore, the robots want to please their Makers and serve them the best they can. For this reason, in the Makers’ absence, the robots have worked to improve themselves, learning what they can about natural science and mathematics. When Elb probes Steffens’s mind to learn more about matter, his purpose is to enhance their knowledge. Likewise, humans seek to gain more knowledge about God and his teachings to serve God better.\n\tIt is also ironic that Steffens concludes that the Makers died in a war due to the ruined cities they discovered, but he doesn’t want to harm the robots’ faith in the return of their Makers. \n\t\n"
] |
50827
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Orphans of the Void
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick—the Universe is full of them. Finding one worth living for is the genuine problem!
In the region of the Coal Sack Nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called Tyban, Captain Steffens of the Mapping Command stood counting buildings. Eleven. No, twelve. He wondered if there was any significance in the number. He had no idea.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
Lieutenant Ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit.
"Looks like a temporary camp," Ball said. "Very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. Castaways, maybe?"
Steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. The flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him.
"No inscriptions," he pointed out.
"They would have been worn away. See the wind grooves? Anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. You wouldn't call it much of a civilization."
"You don't think these are native?"
Ball said he didn't. Steffens nodded.
Standing there and gazing at the stone, Steffens felt the awe of great age. He had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old— too old. He reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. Although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks.
Ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "Want to set up shop, Skipper?"
Steffens paused. "All right, if you think it will do any good."
"You never can tell. Excavation probably won't be much use. These things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. And you can see that the rock itself is native—" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet—"and was cut out a long while back."
"How long?"
Ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "I wouldn't like to say off-hand."
"Make a rough estimate."
Ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. He smiled wryly and said: "Five thousand years? Ten thousand? I don't know."
Steffens whistled.
Ball pointed again at the wall. "Look at the striations. You can tell from that alone. It would take even a brisk Earth wind at least several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force."
The two men stood for a long moment in silence. Man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. It was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history.
Man had been in space for only three hundred years. Whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years.
Which ought to give them , thought Steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start.
While the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, Steffens remained alone among the buildings. Ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls.
"Well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since."
"No? How can you be sure?" Steffens grunted. "A space-borne race was roaming this part of the Galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, that long ago. And this planet is only a parsec from Varius II, a civilization as old as Earth's. Did whoever built these get to Varius? Or did they get to Earth? How can you know?"
He kicked at the sand distractedly. "And most important, where are they now? A race with several thousand years...."
"Fifteen thousand," Ball said. When Steffens looked up, he added:
"That's what the geology boys say. Fifteen thousand, at the least."
Steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. When he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him.
"But why buildings? Why did they have to build in stone, to last? There's something wrong with that. They shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. And castaways would have left something behind. The only reason they would need a camp would be—"
"If the ship left and some of them stayed."
Steffens nodded. "But then the ship must have come back. Where did it go?" He ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "We'll never know."
"How about the other planets?" Ball asked.
"The report was negative. Inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. The third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but it has a CO
2
atmosphere."
"How about moons?"
Steffens shrugged. "We could try them and find out."
The third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. The ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. They came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone.
The moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. The third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. Steffens expected nothing, but he had to try.
At a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the Mapping Command. Faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below.
Steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently.
After a while he saw a city.
The main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. Someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and Steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead.
He looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. Near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. In all the piled rubble, nothing moved.
Steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. The rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities—all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing.
No one on the ship had anything to say. None had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on Earth or near it for more than three hundred years.
The ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. When they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. It became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive.
After a while Ball said: "Well, which do you figure? Did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?"
Steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. They were coming around to the daylight side.
"We'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "Break out the radiation suits."
He paused, thinking. If the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. They had starships and were warlike. Then, thousands of years ago. He began to realize how important it really was that Ball's question be answered.
When the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, Steffens was still by the screen. It was Steffens, then, who saw the thing move.
Down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. Steffens froze. And he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot.
Tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. Steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past.
Quickly Steffens called for height. The ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. Steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. And he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms.
Nothing alive but robots, he thought, robots . He adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. Behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement.
A band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head—it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. On the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. The angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. He could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. They were the most perfect robots he had ever seen.
The ship leveled off. Steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. He had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. Now he had nothing to do. He tried to concentrate on what the League Law would have him do.
The Law was no help. Contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. But could a bunch of robots be called a race? The Law said nothing about robots because Earthmen had none. The building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. But at any rate, Steffens thought, he had made contact already.
While Steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, Lieutenant Ball came up, hobbling slightly. From the bright new bruise on his cheek, Steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. The exec was pale with surprise.
"What were they?" he said blankly. "Lord, they looked like robots!"
"They were."
Ball stared confoundedly at the screen. The things were now a confusion of dots in the mist.
"Almost humanoid," Steffens said, "but not quite."
Ball was slowly absorbing the situation. He turned to gaze inquiringly at Steffens.
"Well, what do we do now?"
Steffens shrugged. "They saw us. We could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on Tyban IV."
" Can we go down?"
"Legally? I don't know. If they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. But there's another possibility." He tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "They don't have to be robots at all. They could be the natives."
Ball gulped. "I don't follow you."
"They could be the original inhabitants of this planet—the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. Anyway," he added,
"they're the most perfect mechanicals I've ever seen."
Ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. Steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the Main Deck, thinking.
The Mapping Command, they called it. Theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. Make a check and nothing else. But he knew very clearly that if he returned to Sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the Law of Contact or for dereliction of duty.
And there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone.
He stopped in the center of the deck. A whole new line of thought opened up. If the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost?
An outpost!
He turned and raced for the bridge. If he went in and landed and was lost, then the League might never know in time. If he went in and stirred up trouble....
The thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. A voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say:
" Greetings. Do not be alarmed. We do not wish you to be alarmed. Our desire is only to serve.... "
"Greetings, it said! Greetings!" Ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips.
Everyone on the ship had heard the voice. When it spoke again, Steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices.
"We await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "Our desire is only to serve."
And then the robots sent a picture .
As perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in Steffens' mind. On the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. With slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its right side, and extended it toward Steffens, a graciously offered hand.
Steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. The robot mind had helped.
When the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. He waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. He had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. So when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear.
While the crew watched in fascination, Steffens tried to talk back. He concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands.
"Greetings," he said, because it was what they had said, and explained: "We have come from the stars."
It was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. He wondered baffledly if he should have let the Alien Contact crew handle it. Order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and think a message?
No, it was his responsibility; he had to go on:
"We request—we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet."
Steffens had not realized that there were so many.
They had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. Others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that Steffens felt a momentary anxiety. Most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. Others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for Steffens when he came out.
One of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as Steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. The black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. Steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit.
"Welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now Steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. It was less friendly now, less—Steffens could not understand—somehow less interested , as if the robot had been—expecting someone else.
"Thank you," Steffens said. "We are deeply grateful for your permission to land."
"Our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve."
Suddenly, Steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. He tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they should seem inhuman. But....
"Will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically.
Steffens felt his embarrassment. The ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently.
"They must remain with the ship," Steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. Although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask.
For a long while, neither spoke, long enough for Steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. He could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the Aliencon men to come on out of the skiff.
They came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. Steffens heard the one robot speak again. The voice was now much more friendly.
"We hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. It is our—custom—not to communicate unless we are called upon. But when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real—nature—and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data."
Steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action.
"We perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be—dismayed—to learn that we have been gathering information from you. We must—apologize. Our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. Only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and—understanding. We will enter your minds henceforth only at your request."
Steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. Nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the Aliencon men went to work.
The robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. Since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, Steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the Earthmen would feel more at home. The picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of Earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. The one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. Steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail.
It was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the Earthmen. The most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. Symbols in row upon row—numbers, perhaps—were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. If they were numbers, Steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. But he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. He was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical.
It wasn't until he was on his way home that Steffens remembered the symbols again. And only then did he realized what they were.
After a while, convinced that there was no danger, Steffens had the ship brought down. When the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. There were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. The mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat.
The robots had obviously been built to serve. Steffens began to feel their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. They were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. Whoever had built them, Steffens thought in wonder, had built them well.
Ball came to join Steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. A robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. The first to speak had remained with Steffens.
Realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, Ball was for a while apprehensive. But the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. It was impossible not to like the things. There was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing.
Their builders, Steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too.
"There's no harm in them," said Ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "They seem actually glad we're here. My God, whoever heard of a robot being glad?"
Steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "I hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but—yours is a remarkable race. We have never before made contact with a race like yours." It was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do.
The robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head.
"I perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. Your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' I am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey—I would have to examine your thought more fully—but I believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures."
The robot paused. Steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted.
"I must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are—curious." It stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. Steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. It said at length:
"We know of only two types of living structure. Ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the Makers , which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. I am not a—doctor—and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the Makers' composition, but if you are interested I will have a doctor brought forward. It will be glad to be of assistance."
It was Steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while Ball and the second robot looked on in silence. The Makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," Steffens decided, were probably just that—doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the Makers.
The efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush:
"Can you tell us where the Makers are?"
Both robots stood motionless. It occurred to Steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. The voice that came to him spoke with difficulty.
"The Makers—are not here."
Steffens stared in puzzlement. The robot detected his confusion and went on:
"The Makers have gone away. They have been gone for a very long time."
Could that be pain in its voice, Steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind.
War. The Makers had all been killed in that war. And these had not been killed.
He tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. There were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that nothing , nothing could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide brought him up sharp.
If there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. If the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere—good God, how old were the robots? Steffens looked at Ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. The black wheat. Steffens felt a deep chill.
Were they immortal?
"Would you like to see a doctor?"
Steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring.
"No, not yet," he said, "thank you." He swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently.
"Could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? Individually?"
"By your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "I am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive."
Steffens tried to understand that.
"It would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. Using the first—letters—of my designation, my name would translate as Elb."
"Glad to meet you," Steffens mumbled.
"You are called 'Stef,'" said the robot obligingly. Then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near Ball: "The age of—Peb—is seventeen years, one month and four days. Peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years."
Steffens was trying to keep up. Then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. But the cities, and the carbon dioxide? The robot, Elb, had said that the Makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. Unless—
He remembered the buildings on Tyban IV.
Unless the Makers had not come from this planet at all.
His mind helplessly began to revolve. It was Ball who restored order.
"Do you build yourselves?" the exec asked.
Peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering.
"No, we do not build ourselves. We are made by the—" another pause for a word—"by the Factory ."
"The Factory?"
"Yes. It was built by the Makers. Would you care to see it?"
Both of the Earthmen nodded dumbly.
"Would you prefer to use your—skiff? It is quite a long way from here."
It was indeed a long way, even by skiff. Some of the Aliencon crew went along with them. And near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the Factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. A huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. Steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. Robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance—moving around their birthplace.
The Earthmen remained for several weeks. During that time, Steffens was usually with Elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the Aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. There was still the mystery of those buildings on Tyban IV; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave.
Surprisingly, Steffens did not think about the future. Whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking.
Something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. It came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. Not a bug, a worm, a leaf. They did not know what flesh was. Only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." It had taken them some time to recognize that the Earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed.
But when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing.
At first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the Earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. And one morning, when Steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area.
It was at this point that Steffens asked how many robots there were. He learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. The great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive.
Steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed Elb to probe into his mind. The robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that Steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. Steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life.
He had a vague idea of the robot's history—more, perhaps, then they knew themselves—but he refrained from forming an opinion until Aliencon made its report. What fascinated him was Elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had.
"What do you do ?" Steffens asked.
Elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "We can do very little. A certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the Makers. We spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. We have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. Our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the Makers. Any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the Makers return."
"When they return?" It had not occurred to Steffens until now that the robots expected the Makers to do so.
Elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "I see you had surmised that the Makers were not coming back."
If the robot could have laughed, Steffens thought it would have, then. But it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic.
"It has always been our belief that the Makers would return. Why else would we have been built?"
Steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. The question, to Elb, was no question at all.
Although Steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known—that the Makers were gone and would never come back—he was a long time understanding. What he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from Elb. He had no desire to destroy a faith.
But it created a problem in him. He had begun to picture for Elb the structure of human society, and the robot—a machine which did not eat or sleep—listened gravely and tried to understand. One day Steffens mentioned God.
"God?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "What is God?"
Steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered:
"It is a matter which has troubled us. We thought at first that you were the Makers returning—" Steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed—"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the Makers or ourselves. You were not even—" Elb caught himself—"you did not happen to be telepaths. Therefore we troubled over who made you. We did detect the word 'Maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar—" Elb paused for a long while—"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you."
Steffens understood. He nodded.
The Makers were the robots' God, were all the God they needed. The Makers had built them, the planet, the universe. If he were to ask them who made the Makers, it would be like their asking him who made God.
It was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself.
But on that planet, it was the last time he smiled.
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Who is the webfoot and what is his personality like?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A City Near Centaurus by William R. Doede.
Relevant chunks:
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
Question:
Who is the webfoot and what is his personality like?
Answer:
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[
"The webfoot, real name Maota (also referred to as “the native” by Mr. Michaelson), is the self-proclaimed keeper of the dead city on Alpha Centaurus II. He is an older man of at least sixty or seventy years, short in stature with long gray hair to his shoulders. The toes of his webbed, bare feet drag in the sand as he walks making a trail behind him. \nMaota is sturdy in his beliefs that the dead city needs to be protected, and that the gods are being disrupted by Mr. Michaelson. He feels strongly enough about it that he resorts to physical violence on two occasions - hitting Mr. Michaelson with a book over the head, and firing a gun-like weapon at him. Although he is angry and violent with Mr. Michaelson, he also shows remarkable tolerance for him. \nMaota’s ultimate duty, he believes, is to the gods. This brings him turmoil when he thinks he missed the chance the gods gave him to kill Mr. Michaelson, and even apologized to him directly for instead letting him suffer with a head wound instead of killing him. There is a reference to them perhaps having met before when Michaelson says tauntingly to Maota, “You never told us about this old dead city… Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?” Thus, Maota is also motivated to protect the dead city at all costs, perhaps even concealing its location. \n",
"The webfoot is named Maota, and he is the guardian of the ancient dead city on Alpha Centaurus II. His people are not natives of the planet but originated from a colony from the system's fifth planet. These people are curious and sometimes highly intelligent, although they are not educated. Maota himself is an older man, perhaps sixty or seventy years old, short with long gray hair. He wears no shoes, and his toes drag in the sand as he walks. Maota is upset when he finds Michaelson trespassing in the dead city and urgently informs him that he is on sacred ground and must leave. Maota tells Michaelson that the spirits are angry that he is there and indicates the spirits might return; that is why he guards the city. When Michaelson pays no heed to the order to leave, Maota grows angry, warning Michaelson that even his steps or breath may be detrimental to the spirits and he must leave now or be killed. When his warning falls on deaf ears, Maota resorts to flattery, saying that it takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in the old street, thus implying that Michaelson is not only a god but one with the sensitivity required to detect the history and spirits of the place. \nHowever, when Michaelson tells Maota his plan to build a museum and display everything for others to come and see, Maota loses his temper and throws one of the ancient books at Michaelson, hitting him in the back of the head and knocking him unconscious. After Michaelson stays in the city overnight, Maota approaches him with a weapon, intent on killing him. Maota believes he has reasoned logically with Michaelson and given him enough warnings that he should have left; he isn’t interested in negotiating with Michaelson because the only satisfactory outcome is for Michaelson to leave and never come back. He is prepared to kill Michaelson with his tube gun. Maota is willing to entertain Michaelson’s last request, which is for Maota to read to him from the book. He does, but he still insists Michaelson must die. The city must be preserved for the spirits, not a show for people who may not appreciate it or the spirits. Maota’s great sensitivity and reverence for the spirits lead to his great despair when the book of poetry is destroyed. When he is unsuccessful at driving Michaelson away, he chooses the last resort—using the device that kills his human body but allows his mind to live on.\n",
"The webfooted man's name is Maota, and he is part of a group of people who live on Alpha Centaurus II, far away from the old city where Michaelson meets him. Although they make their home on Alpha Centaurus II, the webfooted people are originally from a colony on the fifth planet in the system. Michaelson wonders why Maota is so far from his people when they first meet. Maota stays in the city because he believes strongly in the presence of spirits, and he spends his days roaming the streets feeling their presence and reading an ancient book of poetry. Maota bemoans Michaelson's presence because he believes his interest in preserving the city for posterity disturbs the spirits and would potentially violate the beauty and magic of the city. Because of Michaelson's teleportation implant, Maota believes Michaelson is a god, and so he feels he must kill Michaelson if he will not leave because mortals cannot negotiate wit\nh gods. Once Michaelson convinces Maota he is just a human, Maota feels disappointed because he had hoped Michaelson would join him in his practice of thinking the ancient thoughts. As such, Maota leads Michaelson to a room where he keeps a clock-like device that he triggers. Then, Maota appears to die. In actuality, his spirit has been transferred to another dimension. When Michaelson joins him there and demonstrates how he can zoom in between dimensions using his implant, Maota starts to believe Michaelson is a devil.",
"Maota is a webfoot that lives on Alpha Centaurus II. He is older, around 60 or 70 years of age, and the lines on his face show it. He is a human with normal human features, aside from his webbed feet. He does not wear shoes but chooses to walk barefoot. With long, gray hair and relatively short stature, Maota is a weathered man. He takes his self-assigned role as keeper of the city very seriously and will act violently if need be. Maota is very spiritual, shown through his belief that tampering with the city will upset the spirits should they choose to return home. Although he is somewhat patient with Michaelson at first, he chooses his duty over Michaelson’s curiosity. He attempts to kill him twice but to no avail, which shows his true dedication to the city. In the end, when he is trapped in the so-called fourth dimension, Maota is incredibly angry when Michaelson, an alleged god with his cylinder, is able to travel between planes while he is stuck there. "
] |
50802
|
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
|
Who is Mr. Michaelson and what is his personality like?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A City Near Centaurus by William R. Doede.
Relevant chunks:
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
Question:
Who is Mr. Michaelson and what is his personality like?
Answer:
|
[
"Mr. Michaelson is a determined, tall, gaunt archeologist who enjoys finding artifacts and methodically undergoes the process of discovering and unearthing things, like this dead city on Alpha Centaurus II. His wife died many years ago back on Earth, and he has no children and no friends in the Earth settlement. He has a tiny cylinder in the flesh behind his ear that allows him to teleport instantly to a different location when touched.\nHe does not believe in the spiritual, and rejects that the dead city he stumbles across even needs a keeper, offending Maota greatly who refers to him as “Mr. Earthgod.”\nMr. Michaelson is ignorant and pushy towards Maota, not heeding his warnings or respecting his appeals to leave because it is angering the gods. Instead, Mr. Michaelson can’t understand why Maota won’t negotiate with him, almost as if he is entitled to take possession of the secrets and artifacts of the dead city\n",
"Michaelson is an Earthman on Alpha Centaurus II and an archeologist. At first, he seems to be a cheerful, pleasant man as he explores the ruins of the dead city because he is smiling to himself, exclaiming about his finds, marveling, and chuckling. He is, indeed, extremely interested in his findings. At the same time, however, he is stubborn, strong headed, and determined and treats Maota with condescension and even rudeness, questioning Maota’s need to protect a dead city, denying Maota’s belief that the spirits will return there, and dismissing his faith as superstition. Michaelson is also convinced that his views are right and that anyone else’s are wrong. For example, he is impressed with the talking book until he learns that it is a book of poetry; then, he considers it a waste. He believes books about mathematics or history are much more valuable. On the other hand, he is eager to hear Maota read the book, and the sounds of the words, even though he cannot understand them, move him and remind him the lost people were human with human sentiments and passions. When Maota decides to leave but indicates he is going in a direction Michaelson doesn’t know, Michaelson calls him stupid outright. Michaelson is curious to decipher the ancient peoples’ language and devotes hours to doing so. He then spent weeks trying to learn more about the clock device. When he can’t find anything out about it, he finally decides to push the button to experience its effects.\n\n",
"Mr. Michaelson is an archeologist from Earth who uses a cylindrical implant placed behind his ear to travel instantly from Earth to Alpha Centaurus II. He wants to explore an old city whose inhabitants had mysteriously vanished. Michaelson's wife had died many years prior to his arrival at Alpha Centaurus II, and he has neither children nor friends in the Earth settlement where he lives. Mr. Michaelson is compelled by his curiosity and his interest in preserving historical artifacts for posterity. When he first arrives in the city, he excitedly explores the unique buildings in spite of the sand and cobwebs; he eagerly investigates the various artifacts he finds, and he makes a small pile of them that he intends to investigate further. Michaelson acknowledges the intelligence of the webfooted natives, but he still treats Maota with a great deal of dismissiveness and condescension when Maota insists on the presence of sacred spirits in the city. Michaelson is a man of science and does not have much patience for the mysticism Maota espouses. He also shrugs off Maota's persistent threats to kill him and tries to convince him to support his preservation efforts. However, Michaelson does have some sense of self-preservation, which he displays in his fight with Maota. By the end of the story, Michaelson's scientific curiosity merges with a newly-discovered spiritual awareness when he realizes he can zoom in and out of dimensions by combining the powers of the clock-like device with his own cylindrical implant.",
"Mr. Michaelson is an Earthman without any close connections. His wife passed away many years back, and they never had any children together. Without anything truly tying him down, Michaelson is able to fully devote himself to his work without any distractions. As an archaeologist, he wants to discover more about ancient cultures, the way they thought, and the things they created. When he discovers the ancient city that the webfoots kept from the Earthmen, he instantly sorts through the sand and piles artifacts in the street. He plans on building a museum there where all mankind can come and see what life was like in this city half a million years ago. Mr. Michaelson is inherently curious and a little impulsive, shown time and time again when he chose to ignore Maota’s warnings. \nHis cylinder, tailored to Michaelson specifically, makes him a god in the eyes of Maota since he can transport himself between places in the blink of an eye. However, just like Maota, Michaelson is able to grow old and die like any other human. \n"
] |
50802
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A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
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What is the cylinder and why is it significant?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A City Near Centaurus by William R. Doede.
Relevant chunks:
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
Question:
What is the cylinder and why is it significant?
Answer:
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[
"The cylinder is an implement tailored to Mr. Michaelson that is tucked behind his ear and will allow him to go anywhere that he desires when it is pressed. He uses it several times in the story to travel to physical places, disappearing immediately and reappearing in a new location. Once, to travel to a cold stream to wash his bleeding wounds after being hit on the head with a book by Maota, and a second time to avoid being killed by Maota firing a weapon to kill him.\nAfter Maota presses the button of the “clock” in the dead city and appears to drop dead. Mr. Michaelson desperately attempts to gain the knowledge to understand what the clock device does. Rather radically, he decides that he must press the button to fully understand, not completely knowing that he won’t die when he does. When Mr. Michaelson sees his dead body below him in the city and communicates wordlessly with Maota in this spiritual dimension he begins to panic and search for ways to get back into his body. This is how he discovers that he can will the cylinder with his mind, and return into his physical body by doing so. Through this act he can traverse between the physical and spiritual realms, which ultimately makes him considered a god by Maota (greatly angering him).\n",
"The cylinder is a small device inserted under the flesh behind Michaelson’s ear and transports him to other locations instantly, operated by his thoughts. Each cylinder is tailored to the person for whom it is intended and will not work for anyone else. It instantly sends him 500 miles across the desert to a creek where he can wash and cool off after his head injury. The cylinder saves his life twice: first in the fight with Maota when Maota points the tube gun at him. Michaelson uses the cylinder to jump out of Maota’s line of sight and land behind him. The second time it saves his life is when he uses the clock device. Michaelson’s lifeless body is left behind as his mind journey’s to where Maota’s is, a place from which there is no return. However, Michaelson remembers the cylinder and tries to use it to return to his body, and it works. The cylinder, not the clock device, actually sent him to where Maota’s mind went. \n",
"The cylinder is a small, artificial implant that Mr. Michaelson receives behind his ear. The implant allows him to travel any distance, great or small, instantaneously and is triggered by a thought. The implant enables Michaelson to travel from Earth to Alpha Centaurus II, and he uses the implant again to locate the old city that he explores on foot. After Maota injures Michaelson with the poetry book, he uses the implant to transport himself to a small creek where he washes away the caked blood from his hair. Later, Michaelson again triggers the implant to avoid being shot by Maota when he attempts to kill him. Maota indicates he believes Michaelson is a god because of his ability to travel any distance in the blink of an eye. When Maota demonstrates the power of the clock-like device to transfer a person's spirit to another dimension, Michaelson realizes he maintains a connection to his corporeal body via the cylindrical implant. He uses this realization to his advantage by triggering the implant, which allows him to go back and forth between the fourth dimension and his corporeal form.",
"The cylinder is an innovative invention shared among Earthmen. It allows the person wearing it to travel between places in the blink of an eye. Michaelson wears his cylinder above the ear, and it is specifically tailored to his being. This device becomes incredibly important in the story as Michaelson uses it several times throughout his time in the ancient ruins. The first instance of significance was when Maota attempted to kill Michaelson with his weapon, but Michaelson simply disappeared in front of his eyes, only to reappear behind him and knock him out with a well-timed blow. The cylinder saved his life then and elevated him to god-like status in Maota’s eyes. \nAfter Maota travels through the mysterious clock and presumably dies, Michaelson spends several weeks deciding what to do. When he finally hits the button, his body also falls, just like Maota’s, and he regains consciousness in a spirit world where he can see everything on any planet he wants. Maota tells him that no one is able to leave, no matter how hard they try, and that they are stuck in this plane of existence. Michaelson, however, is able to use his cylinder to travel out of that dimension and back onto the planet. He does it again to prove that it truly works, leaving Maota crying out in anger. \n"
] |
50802
|
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
|
What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A City Near Centaurus by William R. Doede.
Relevant chunks:
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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[
"Stationed on the Earth base of Alpha Centaurus II, Mr. Michaelson, a tall, gaunt archeologist, explores the planet for historical artifacts. He is human, but has a special cylinder embedded in the flesh behind his ear that teleports him to a different location when touched.\nHe comes across an empty city in the desert, with the old buildings filling with blown sand, though he is not alone. He is approached by a short, gray-haired native with webbed bare feet (aka webfoot or Maota) that he spotted in a doorway, who introduces himself as the keeper of the city and implores him to leave because he angers the gods. Michaelson brushes aside that spirits exist, but notes that he must keep an eye on this intelligent native.\nAs Michaelson continues to explore the city and disobey what he was told, the native again demands he leave, calling him “Mr. Earthgod.” Michaelson learns his name is Maota, and tries to negotiate to preserve the artifacts and build a museum. Maota does not succumb to Michaelson’s tactics, and whacks him unconscious with a metal book.\nMichaelson awakes and teleports to a creek 500 miles away to clean his wound, then returns and opens the book to find voices talking to him. He is mystified that the civilization here said to have disappeared half a million years ago was communicating with him. In his wonder, he picks up another clock-like artifact he has been curious about, and is shocked to feel it is radiating heat.\nThe next day, Michaelson awakes in the dead city to find Maota pointing a gun-like weapon at him - apologizing for causing him pain instead of killing him. Maota reads from the talking poetry book, at Michaelson’s request. It moves them both, Michaelson feeling the humanity of the civilization, and Maota feeling the gentle spirits. Maota becomes furious that Michaelson wants to move things into a museum and begins to fire the weapon. Michaelson teleports behind him and in their struggle to take possession they discharge it - destroying the book. \nMaota has disgraced himself and the gods and becomes inconsolable. He has been wanting to try the “clock” device for some time - now with renewed determination because he doesn’t care if it kills him. He explains that he thinks the race of the dead city entered a fourth dimension. Pushing the button, Maota’s body collapses in death. Michaelson tries to bury him, but has the sense that his soul is elsewhere. Michaelson desperately studies the artifacts to understand the clock, then radically decides to just press the button too. Afterwards, he sees his dead body below him and communicates with Maota’s consciousness in a spiritual dimension. He discovers that he can will his cylinder with his mind to return to his physical body, traversing between the physical and spiritual realms. This infuriates Maota who can never return to his body and feels pushed and tricked by Michaelson. \n",
"Michaelson is an archeologist from Earth living on Alpha Centaurus II. He discovers an ancient, hidden city that is remarkably well preserved and half a million years old. He notices an older, webfooted man watching him as he explores the ancient city. The older man, named Maota, tells Michaelson that he is trespassing in the city, which is sacred ground where the spirits may one day return. Maota identifies himself as the city's keeper and warns Michaelson that he is angering the gods. Still, Michaelson pays him little attention because he is so wrapped up in his discovery. Maota warns Michaelson to leave or be killed, but Michaelson continues to ignore Maota and collect and inspect artifacts.\n\tMichaelson talks about building a museum there, showcasing the artifacts, and inviting people to come and see everything. Extremely angry and frustrated, Maota throws one of the ancient books at Michaelson, knocking him out. Later, Michaelson studies the book, opening it and running his finger over the writing, which creates the sound of a voice—the book talks! Inside a tall building, Michaelson observes a clock-like object, touching it and discovering it is warm and vibrating. Amazingly, the device is still operating.\n\tMaota returns in the morning, apologizes for hitting Michaelson, saying he should have killed him. He has brought a weapon with him. Michaelson asks Maota to read to him from the book before he kills him, and Maota agrees, telling Michaelson that it is a book of poetry. Michaelson dismisses the book as unimportant, wondering why the ancient ones didn’t leave books about history or mathematics instead, but he wants to hear it read and asks Maota to read some to him. Then, Maota prepares to shoot Michaelson, but Michaelson uses his cylinder to jump behind Maota before he fires. The two wrestle over the weapon, and it fires a shot into the sand near the book. Together they dig through the sand to find the book, but it is gone. Finally, Maota says he is giving up and going away but not leaving the city. Michaelson is perplexed by the paradoxical statement, but Maota says he doesn’t know enough to explain it. However, he tells Michaelson that he has read the ancient race’s books and knows they conquered all diseases, explored all the mysteries of science, and devised the clock-type machine to cheat death. \n\tMaota presses the button on the clock machine, and it makes noises. Then Maota’s knees buckle, and he is dead. Michaelson buries the body and continues his study of the city, learning the language and reading the books. Then he decides to use the clock device to see what it does. His body collapses, but his mind joins Maota’s. Sad to see his body, Michaelson touches it and feels a vibration of life. He suspects that his cylinder is responsible for his journey, and if that’s right, he should be able to use it to return. He tries, and it works.\n",
"Mr. Michaelson is an archeologist from Earth who visits the ruins of an unnamed, 500,000-year-old city on Alpha Centaurus II. He uses an implant behind his ear to transport himself there instantaneously, and he excitedly explores the sand-covered streets and complex varieties of buildings he discovers. Soon after his arrival, he encounters an old man he quickly identifies as one of the webfooted natives. As he continues exploring, the native man approaches him and orders him to leave since Mr. Michaelson is trespassing on sacred ground and making the spirits angry. Mr. Michaelson refuses, and the native man threatens to kill him if he does not leave. As night falls, Michaelson continues to uncover artifacts left behind by the city’s disappeared inhabitants. The native man returns to ask why Michaelson has not left as instructed, and he introduces himself as Maota; Maota believes Michaelson is a god because of his fascination with the city and its artifacts. Michaelson tries to recruit Maota into helping him preserve the city for posterity, but Maota refuses. Instead, he hits Michaelson in the head with an ancient book he is carrying. When Michaelson awakens, he uses his implant to beam to a small creek where he cleans his wound. When he returns, he discovers the book Maota had used to hit him. He believes he hears the book speaking to him in a strange language. Startled, he returns to a clock-like device he had seen earlier. When he touches the clock, he finds it warm, which frightens him. Michaelson leaves the building and falls asleep. When he awakens later, he finds Maota standing over him, who informs him the book is full of ancient poetry and then says he will kill Michaelson for not leaving the city. Michael asks Maota to read to him from the book before he dies, and Maota obliges. When the book's pages begin to blow in the wind, Maota takes this as proof of the existence of spirits. When Michaelson mocks Maota again, Maota rages and points his gun at him. Michaelson uses his implant to appear behind Maota; the two struggle for control of the gun. They accidentally shoot the book into oblivion. Because of Michaelson's implant, Maota once again believes he is a god, but Michaelson explains to him that it is artificial. Convinced that Michaelson is only human, Maota announces that he is going away, and he offers to show Michaelson how. Maota reveals that the ancient race had not died out; instead, they had used the clock-like device to transfer themselves to a kind of fourth dimension, where they could observe and communicate outside the constraints of a physical body. Maota triggers the device, and his body slumps over. Michaelson buries him and later triggers the device too, finding himself reunited with Maota in the fourth dimension. However, unlike Maota, Michaelson discovers he is able to zoom between dimensions thanks to his implant, which convinces Maota that Michaelson is a devil rather than a god.",
"Mr. Michaelson is a human archaeologist currently exploring Alpha Centaurus II. He comes across the ruins of an ancient city. He walks to it slowly, seeing someone in the distance, but is relieved when he realizes it’s just a webfoot. He explores the city, digging through the sand and rubble to find beautiful artifacts from half a million years ago. He is soon stopped by the webfoot, who explains that Michaelson must leave immediately lest he anger the spirits. He introduces himself as keeper of the city which Michaelson finds amusing. Maota believes that the city must remain untouched so the spirits would not be lost in the darkness. He tells Michaelson to leave quickly or else he will be killed. Michaelson does not leave but continues exploring. His cylinder, a contraption worn above the ear, could transport him back home in a heartbeat, but he decides not to use it yet. Maota approaches Michaelson again, scolding him for not leaving when asked. He calls him “Earthgod,” and says that no human could travel the way he does. They fight about the city and whether or not to leave it alone until Maota strikes Michaelson with a book, knocking him out. \nWhen Michaelson regains consciousness, he travels to a nearby river to wash the blood out of his hair, then pops back into the city. He leafs through the book and discovers that it talks. Entering a building, Michaelson decides to reach out and touch the object that confused him most. It almost looked like a clock, but it was clearly different. It’s warm to the touch. Running back outside, he passes out in the street. He wakes up to Maota standing over him with a gun. Michaelson convinces him to read some of the book aloud, which is the only poetry book in the city. Maota then attempts to kill him, but Michaelson simply travels behind Maota and punches him before he could fire. They fight for Maota’s weapon until it goes off, blasting a hole in the earth. The book was destroyed in the blast. \nMaota grieves the book, and Michaelson explains how he uses the cylinder to travel. Michaelson asks Maota where he’s going to go, and Maota decides to take him along. They travel to his house, and Maota points to the clock on the wall. He explains that he believes it allows people to travel to another dimension, and he has decided to use it. He pushes a button and slumps to the floor.\nMichaelson spends the next few weeks learning the ancient language and exploring the city before his curiosity got the better of him. He decides to press the button and travels through the darkness before hearing Maota’s voice. He sees his body below, and Maota reveals that no one can leave this other place. Michaelson decides to use his cylinder and travels back to Alpha Centaurus II. He pushes the button again, only to hear Maota’s screams. He can travel between dimensions. \n"
] |
50802
|
A CITY NEAR CENTAURUS
By BILL DOEDE
Illustrated by WEST
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The city was sacred, but not to its gods. Michaelson was a god—but far from sacred!
Crouched in the ancient doorway like an animal peering out from his burrow, Mr. Michaelson saw the native.
At first he was startled, thinking it might be someone else from the Earth settlement who had discovered the old city before him. Then he saw the glint of sun against the metallic skirt, and relaxed.
He chuckled to himself, wondering with amusement what a webfooted man was doing in an old dead city so far from his people. Some facts were known about the people of Alpha Centaurus II. They were not actually natives, he recalled. They were a colony from the fifth planet of the system. They were a curious people. Some were highly intelligent, though uneducated.
He decided to ignore the man for the moment. He was far down the ancient street, a mere speck against the sand. There would be plenty of time to wonder about him.
He gazed out from his position at the complex variety of buildings before him. Some were small, obviously homes. Others were huge with tall, frail spires standing against the pale blue sky. Square buildings, ellipsoid, spheroid. Beautiful, dream-stuff bridges connected tall, conical towers, bridges that still swung in the wind after half a million years. Late afternoon sunlight shone against ebony surfaces. The sands of many centuries had blown down the wide streets and filled the doorways. Desert plants grew from roofs of smaller buildings.
Ignoring the native, Mr. Michaelson poked about among the ruins happily, exclaiming to himself about some particular artifact, marveling at its state of preservation, holding it this way and that to catch the late afternoon sun, smiling, clucking gleefully. He crawled over the rubble through old doorways half filled with the accumulation of ages. He dug experimentally in the sand with his hands, like a dog, under a roof that had weathered half a million years of rain and sun. Then he crawled out again, covered with dust and cobwebs.
The native stood in the street less than a hundred feet away, waving his arms madly. "Mr. Earthgod," he cried. "It is sacred ground where you are trespassing!"
The archeologist smiled, watching the man hurry closer. He was short, even for a native. Long gray hair hung to his shoulders, bobbing up and down as he walked. He wore no shoes. The toes of his webbed feet dragged in the sand, making a deep trail behind him. He was an old man.
"You never told us about this old dead city," Michaelson said, chidingly. "Shame on you. But never mind. I've found it now. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, beautiful. You will leave now."
"Leave?" Michaelson asked, acting surprised as if the man were a child. "I just got here a few hours ago."
"You must go."
"Why? Who are you?"
"I am keeper of the city."
"You?" Michaelson laughed. Then, seeing how serious the native was, said, "What makes you think a dead city needs a keeper?"
"The spirits may return."
Michaelson crawled out of the doorway and stood up. He brushed his trousers. He pointed. "See that wall? Built of some metal, I'd say, some alloy impervious to rust and wear."
"The spirits are angry."
"Notice the inscriptions? Wind has blown sand against them for eons, and rain and sleet. But their story is there, once we decipher it."
"Leave!"
The native's lined, weathered old face was working around the mouth in anger. Michaelson was almost sorry he had mocked him. He was deadly serious.
"Look," he said. "No spirits are ever coming back here. Don't you know that? And even if they did, spirits care nothing for old cities half covered with sand and dirt."
He walked away from the old man, heading for another building. The sun had already gone below the horizon, coloring the high clouds. He glanced backward. The webfoot was following.
"Mr. Earthgod!" the webfoot cried, so sharply that Michaelson stopped.
"You must not touch, not walk upon, not handle. Your step may destroy the home of some ancient spirit. Your breath may cause one iota of change and a spirit may lose his way in the darkness. Go quickly now, or be killed."
He turned and walked off, not looking back.
Michaelson stood in the ancient street, tall, gaunt, feet planted wide, hands in pockets, watching the webfoot until he was out of sight beyond a huge circular building. There was a man to watch. There was one of the intelligent ones. One look into the alert old eyes had told him that.
Michaelson shook his head, and went about satisfying his curiosity. He entered buildings without thought of roofs falling in, or decayed floors dropping from under his weight. He began to collect small items, making a pile of them in the street. An ancient bowl, metal untouched by the ages. A statue of a man, one foot high, correct to the minutest detail, showing how identical they had been to Earthmen. He found books still standing on ancient shelves but was afraid to touch them without tools.
Darkness came swiftly and he was forced out into the street.
He stood there alone feeling the age of the place. Even the smell of age was in the air. Silver moonlight from the two moons filtered through clear air down upon the ruins. The city lay now in darkness, dead and still, waiting for morning so it could lie dead and still in the sun.
There was no hurry to be going home, although he was alone, although this was Alpha Centaurus II with many unknowns, many dangers ... although home was a very great distance away. There was no one back there to worry about him.
His wife had died many years ago back on Earth. No children. His friends in the settlement would not look for him for another day at least. Anyway, the tiny cylinder, buried in flesh behind his ear, a thing of mystery and immense power, could take him home instantly, without effort save a flicker of thought.
"You did not leave, as I asked you."
Michaelson whirled around at the sound of the native's voice. Then he relaxed. He said, "You shouldn't sneak up on a man like that."
"You must leave, or I will be forced to kill you. I do not want to kill you, but if I must...." He made a clucking sound deep in the throat.
"The spirits are angry."
"Nonsense. Superstition! But never mind. You have been here longer than I. Tell me, what are those instruments in the rooms? It looks like a clock but I'm certain it had some other function."
"What rooms?"
"Oh, come now. The small rooms back there. Look like they were bedrooms."
"I do not know." The webfoot drew closer. Michaelson decided he was sixty or seventy years old, at least.
"You've been here a long time. You are intelligent, and you must be educated, the way you talk. That gadget looks like a time-piece of some sort. What is it? What does it measure?"
"I insist that you go." The webfoot held something in his hand.
"No." Michaelson looked off down the street, trying to ignore the native, trying to feel the life of the city as it might have been.
"You are sensitive," the native said in his ear. "It takes a sensitive god to feel the spirits moving in the houses and walking in these old streets."
"Say it any way you want to. This is the most fascinating thing I've ever seen. The Inca's treasure, the ruins of Pompeii, Egyptian tombs—none can hold a candle to this."
"Mr. Earthgod...."
"Don't call me that. I'm not a god, and you know it."
The old man shrugged. "It is not an item worthy of dispute. Those names you mention, are they the names of gods?"
He chuckled. "In a way, yes. What is your name?"
"Maota."
"You must help me, Maota. These things must be preserved. We'll build a museum, right here in the street. No, over there on the hill just outside the city. We'll collect all the old writings and perhaps we may decipher them. Think of it, Maota! To read pages written so long ago and think their thoughts. We'll put everything under glass. Build and evacuate chambers to stop the decay. Catalogue, itemize...."
Michaelson was warming up to his subject, but Maota shook his head like a waving palm frond and stamped his feet.
"You will leave now."
"Can't you see? Look at the decay. These things are priceless. They must be preserved. Future generations will thank us."
"Do you mean," the old man asked, aghast, "that you want others to come here? You know the city abhors the sound of alien voices. Those who lived here may return one day! They must not find their city packaged and preserved and laid out on shelves for the curious to breathe their foul breaths upon. You will leave. Now!"
"No." Michaelson was adamant. The rock of Gibraltar.
Maota hit him, quickly, passionately, and dropped the weapon beside his body. He turned swiftly, making a swirling mark in the sand with his heel, and walked off toward the hills outside the city.
The weapon he had used was an ancient book. Its paper-thin pages rustled in the wind as if an unseen hand turned them, reading, while Michaelson's blood trickled out from the head wound upon the ancient street.
When he regained consciousness the two moons, bright sentinel orbs in the night sky, had moved to a new position down their sliding path. Old Maota's absence took some of the weirdness and fantasy away. It seemed a more practical place now.
The gash in his head was painful, throbbing with quick, short hammer-blows synchronized with his heart beats. But there was a new determination in him. If it was a fight that the old webfooted fool wanted, a fight he would get. The cylinder flicked him, at his command, across five hundred miles of desert and rocks to a small creek he remembered. Here he bathed his head in cool water until all the caked blood was dissolved from his hair. Feeling better, he went back.
The wind had turned cool. Michaelson shivered, wishing he had brought a coat. The city was absolutely still except for small gusts of wind sighing through the frail spires. The ancient book still lay in the sand beside the dark spot of blood. He stooped over and picked it up.
It was light, much lighter than most Earth books. He ran a hand over the binding. Smooth it was, untouched by time or climate. He squinted at the pages, tilting the book to catch the bright moonlight, but the writing was alien. He touched the page, ran his forefinger over the writing.
Suddenly he sprang back. The book fell from his hands.
"God in heaven!" he exclaimed.
He had heard a voice. He looked around at the old buildings, down the length of the ancient street. Something strange about the voice. Not Maota. Not his tones. Not his words. Satisfied that no one was near, he stooped and picked up the book again.
"Good God!" he said aloud. It was the book talking. His fingers had touched the writing again. It was not a voice, exactly, but a stirring in his mind, like a strange language heard for the first time.
A talking book. What other surprises were in the city? Tall, fragile buildings laughing at time and weather. A clock measuring God-knows-what. If such wonders remained, what about those already destroyed? One could only guess at the machines, the gadgets, the artistry already decayed and blown away to mix forever with the sand.
I must preserve it, he thought, whether Maota likes it or not. They say these people lived half a million years ago. A long time. Let's see, now. A man lives one hundred years on the average. Five thousand lifetimes.
And all you do is touch a book, and a voice jumps across all those years!
He started off toward the tall building he had examined upon discovery of the city. His left eyelid began to twitch and he laid his forefinger against the eye, pressing until it stopped. Then he stooped and entered the building. He laid the book down and tried to take the "clock" off the wall. It was dark in the building and his fingers felt along the wall, looking for it. Then he touched it. His fingers moved over its smooth surface. Then suddenly he jerked his hand back with an exclamation of amazement. Fear ran up his spine.
The clock was warm.
He felt like running, like flicking back to the settlement where there were people and familiar voices, for here was a thing that should not be. Half a million years—and here was warmth!
He touched it again, curiosity overwhelming his fear. It was warm. No mistake. And there was a faint vibration, a suggestion of power. He stood there in the darkness staring off into the darkness, trembling. Fear built up in him until it was a monstrous thing, drowning reason. He forgot the power of the cylinder behind his ear. He scrambled through the doorway. He got up and ran down the ancient sandy street until he came to the edge of the city. Here he stopped, gasping for air, feeling the pain throb in his head.
Common sense said that he should go home, that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished at night, that he was tired, that he was weak from loss of blood and fright and running. But when Michaelson was on the trail of important discoveries he had no common sense.
He sat down in the darkness, meaning to rest a moment.
When he awoke dawn was red against thin clouds in the east.
Old Maota stood in the street with webbed feet planted far apart in the sand, a weapon in the crook of his arm. It was a long tube affair, familiar to Michaelson.
Michaelson asked, "Did you sleep well?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"How do you feel?"
"Fine, but my head aches a little."
"Sorry," Maota said.
"For what?"
"For hitting you. Pain is not for gods like you."
Michaelson relaxed somewhat. "What kind of man are you? First you try to break my skull, then you apologize."
"I abhor pain. I should have killed you outright."
He thought about that for a moment, eyeing the weapon.
It looked in good working order. Slim and shiny and innocent, it looked like a glorified African blowgun. But he was not deceived by its appearance. It was a deadly weapon.
"Well," he said, "before you kill me, tell me about the book." He held it up for Maota to see.
"What about the book?"
"What kind of book is it?"
"What does Mr. Earthgod mean, what kind of book? You have seen it. It is like any other book, except for the material and the fact that it talks."
"No, no. I mean, what's in it?"
"Poetry."
"Poetry? For God's sake, why poetry? Why not mathematics or history? Why not tell how to make the metal of the book itself? Now there is a subject worthy of a book."
Maota shook his head. "One does not study a dead culture to learn how they made things, but how they thought. But we are wasting time. I must kill you now, so I can get some rest."
The old man raised the gun.
"Wait! You forget that I also have a weapon." He pointed to the spot behind his ear where the cylinder was buried. "I can move faster than you can fire the gun."
Maota nodded. "I have heard how you travel. It does not matter. I will kill you anyway."
"I suggest we negotiate."
"No."
"Why not?"
Maota looked off toward the hills, old eyes filmed from years of sand and wind, leather skin lined and pitted. The hills stood immobile, brown-gray, already shimmering with heat, impotent.
"Why not?" Michaelson repeated.
"Why not what?" Maota dragged his eyes back.
"Negotiate."
"No." Maota's eyes grew hard as steel. They stood there in the sun, not twenty feet apart, hating each other. The two moons, very pale and far away on the western horizon, stared like two bottomless eyes.
"All right, then. At least it's a quick death. I hear that thing just disintegrates a man. Pfft! And that's that."
Michaelson prepared himself to move if the old man's finger slid closer toward the firing stud. The old man raised the gun.
"Wait!"
"Now what?"
"At least read some of the book to me before I die, then."
The gun wavered. "I am not an unreasonable man," the webfoot said.
Michaelson stepped forward, extending his arm with the book.
"No, stay where you are. Throw it."
"This book is priceless. You just don't go throwing such valuable items around."
"It won't break. Throw it."
Michaelson threw the book. It landed at Maota's feet, spouting sand against his leg. He shifted the weapon, picked up the book and leafed through it, raising his head in a listening attitude, searching for a suitable passage. Michaelson heard the thin, metallic pages rustle softly. He could have jumped and seized the weapon at that moment, but his desire to hear the book was strong.
Old Maota read, Michaelson listened. The cadence was different, the syntax confusing. But the thoughts were there. It might have been a professor back on Earth reading to his students. Keats, Shelley, Browning. These people were human, with human thoughts and aspirations.
The old man stopped reading. He squatted slowly, keeping Michaelson in sight, and laid the book face up in the sand. Wind moved the pages.
"See?" he said. "The spirits read. They must have been great readers, these people. They drink the book, as if it were an elixir. See how gentle! They lap at the pages like a new kitten tasting milk."
Michaelson laughed. "You certainly have an imagination."
"What difference does it make?" Maota cried, suddenly angry. "You want to close up all these things in boxes for a posterity who may have no slightest feeling or appreciation. I want to leave the city as it is, for spirits whose existence I cannot prove."
The old man's eyes were furious now, deadly. The gun came down directly in line with the Earthman's chest. The gnarled finger moved.
Michaelson, using the power of the cylinder behind his ear, jumped behind the old webfoot. To Maota it seemed that he had flicked out of existence like a match blown out. The next instant Michaelson spun him around and hit him. It was an inexpert fist, belonging to an archeologist, not a fighter. But Maota was an old man.
He dropped in the sand, momentarily stunned. Michaelson bent over to pick up the gun and the old man, feeling it slip from his fingers, hung on and was pulled to his feet.
They struggled for possession of the gun, silently, gasping, kicking sand. Faces grew red. Lips drew back over Michaelson's white teeth, over Maota's pink, toothless gums. The dead city's fragile spires threw impersonal shadows down where they fought.
Then quite suddenly a finger or hand—neither knew whose finger or hand—touched the firing stud.
There was a hollow, whooshing sound. Both stopped still, realizing the total destruction they might have caused.
"It only hit the ground," Michaelson said.
A black, charred hole, two feet in diameter and—they could not see how deep—stared at them.
Maota let go and sprawled in the sand. "The book!" he cried. "The book is gone!"
"No! We probably covered it with sand while we fought."
Both men began scooping sand in their cupped hands, digging frantically for the book. Saliva dripped from Maota's mouth, but he didn't know or care.
Finally they stopped, exhausted. They had covered a substantial area around the hole. They had covered the complete area where they had been.
"We killed it," the old man moaned.
"It was just a book. Not alive, you know."
"How do you know?" The old man's pale eyes were filled with tears. "It talked and it sang. In a way, it had a soul. Sometimes on long nights I used to imagine it loved me, for taking care of it."
"There are other books. We'll get another."
Maota shook his head. "There are no more."
"But I've seen them. Down there in the square building."
"Not poetry. Books, yes, but not poetry. That was the only book with songs."
"I'm sorry."
" You killed it!" Maota suddenly sprang for the weapon, lying forgotten in the sand. Michaelson put his foot on it and Maota was too weak to tear it loose. He could only weep out his rage.
When he could talk again, Maota said, "I am sorry, Mr. Earthgod. I've disgraced myself."
"Don't be sorry." Michaelson helped him to his feet. "We fight for some reasons, cry for others. A priceless book is a good reason for either."
"Not for that. For not winning. I should have killed you last night when I had the chance. The gods give us chances and if we don't take them we lose forever."
"I told you before! We are on the same side. Negotiate. Have you never heard of negotiation?"
"You are a god," Maota said. "One does not negotiate with gods. One either loves them, or kills them."
"That's another thing. I am not a god. Can't you understand?"
"Of course you are." Maota looked up, very sure. "Mortals cannot step from star to star like crossing a shallow brook."
"No, no. I don't step from one star to another. An invention does that. Just an invention. I carry it with me. It's a tiny thing. No one would ever guess it has such power. So you see, I'm human, just like you. Hit me and I hurt. Cut me and I bleed. I love. I hate. I was born. Some day I'll die. See? I'm human. Just a human with a machine. No more than that."
Maota laughed, then sobered quickly. "You lie."
"No."
"If I had this machine, could I travel as you?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll kill you and take yours."
"It would not work for you."
"Why?"
"Each machine is tailored for each person."
The old man hung his head. He looked down into the black, charred hole. He walked all around the hole. He kicked at the sand, looking half-heartedly again for the book.
"Look," Michaelson said. "I'm sure I've convinced you that I'm human. Why not have a try at negotiating our differences?"
He looked up. His expressive eyes, deep, resigned, studied Michaelson's face. Finally he shook his head sadly. "When we first met I hoped we could think the ancient thoughts together. But our paths diverge. We have finished, you and I."
He turned and started off, shoulders slumped dejectedly.
Michaelson caught up to him. "Are you leaving the city?"
"No."
"Where are you going?"
"Away. Far away." Maota looked off toward the hills, eyes distant.
"Don't be stupid, old man. How can you go far away and not leave the city?"
"There are many directions. You would not understand."
"East. West. North. South. Up. Down."
"No, no. There is another direction. Come, if you must see."
Michaelson followed him far down the street. They came to a section of the city he had not seen before. Buildings were smaller, spires dwarfed against larger structures. Here a path was packed in the sand, leading to a particular building.
Michaelson said, "This is where you live?"
"Yes."
Maota went inside. Michaelson stood in the entrance and looked around. The room was clean, furnished with hand made chairs and a bed. Who is this old man, he thought, far from his people, living alone, choosing a life of solitude among ancient ruins but not touching them? Above the bed a "clock" was fastened to the wall, Michaelson remembered his fright—thinking of the warmth where warmth should not be.
Maota pointed to it.
"You asked about this machine," he said. "Now I will tell you." He laid his hand against it. "Here is power to follow another direction."
Michaelson tested one of the chairs to see if it would hold his weight, then sat down. His curiosity about the instrument was colossal, but he forced a short laugh. "Maota, you are complex. Why not stop all this mystery nonsense and tell me about it? You know more about it than I."
"Of course." Maota smiled a toothless, superior smile. "What do you suppose happened to this race?"
"You tell me."
"They took the unknown direction. The books speak of it. I don't know how the instrument works, but one thing is certain. The race did not die out, as a species becomes extinct."
Michaelson was amused, but interested. "Something like a fourth dimension?"
"I don't know. I only know that with this instrument there is no death. I have read the books that speak of this race, this wonderful people who conquered all disease, who explored all the mysteries of science, who devised this machine to cheat death. See this button here on the face of the instrument? Press the button, and...."
"And what?"
"I don't know, exactly. But I have lived many years. I have walked the streets of this city and wondered, and wanted to press the button. Now I will do so."
Quickly the old man, still smiling, pressed the button. A high-pitched whine filled the air, just within audio range. Steady for a moment, it then rose in pitch passing beyond hearing quickly.
The old man's knees buckled. He sank down, fell over the bed, lay still. Michaelson touched him cautiously, then examined him more carefully. No question about it.
The old man was dead.
Feeling depressed and alone, Michaelson found a desert knoll outside the city overlooking the tall spires that shone in the sunlight and gleamed in the moonlight. He made a stretcher, rolled the old man's body on to it and dragged it down the long ancient street and up the knoll.
Here he buried him.
But it seemed a waste of time. Somehow he knew beyond any doubt that the old native and his body were completely disassociated in some sense more complete than death.
In the days that followed he gave much thought to the "clock." He came to the city every day. He spent long hours in the huge square building with the books. He learned the language by sheer bulldog determination. Then he searched the books for information about the instrument.
Finally after many weeks, long after the winds had obliterated all evidence of Maota's grave on the knoll, Michaelson made a decision. He had to know if the machine would work for him.
And so one afternoon when the ancient spires threw long shadows over the sand he walked down the long street and entered the old man's house. He stood before the instrument, trembling, afraid, but determined. He pinched his eyes shut tight like a child and pressed the button.
The high-pitched whine started.
Complete, utter silence. Void. Darkness. Awareness and memory, yes; nothing else. Then Maota's chuckle came. No sound, an impression only like the voice from the ancient book. Where was he? There was no left or right, up or down. Maota was everywhere, nowhere.
"Look!" Maota's thought was directed at him in this place of no direction. "Think of the city and you will see it."
Michaelson did, and he saw the city beyond, as if he were looking through a window. And yet he was in the city looking at his own body.
Maota's chuckle again. "The city will remain as it is. You did not win after all."
"Neither did you."
"But this existence has compensations," Maota said. "You can be anywhere, see anywhere on this planet. Even on your Earth."
Michaelson felt a great sadness, seeing his body lying across the old, home made bed. He looked closer. He sensed a vibration or life force—he didn't stop to define it—in his body. Why was his dead body different from Old Maota's? Could it be that there was some thread stretching from the reality of his body to his present state?
"I don't like your thoughts," Maota said. "No one can go back. I tried. I have discussed it with many who are not presently in communication with you. No one can go back."
Michaelson decided he try.
"No!" Maota's thought was prickled with fear and anger.
Michaelson did not know how to try, but he remembered the cylinder and gathered all the force of his mind in spite of Maota's protests, and gave his most violent command.
At first he thought it didn't work. He got up and looked around, then it struck him. He was standing up!
The cylinder. He knew it was the cylinder. That was the difference between himself and Maota. When he used the cylinder, that was where he went, the place where Maota was now. It was a door of some kind, leading to a path of some kind where distance was non-existent. But the
"clock" was a mechanism to transport only the mind to that place.
To be certain of it, he pressed the button again, with the same result as before. He saw his own body fall down. He felt Maota's presence.
"You devil!" Maota's thought-scream was a sword of hate and anger, irrational suddenly, like a person who knows his loss is irrevocable.
"I said you were a god. I said you were a god. I said you were a god...! "
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Who is Robson Hind and what happens to him throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lost Tribes of Venus by Erik Fennel.
Relevant chunks:
THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
Question:
Who is Robson Hind and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Robson Hind is a very wealthy man and jet chief of Number Four. The son of the manager of Hoskins Corporation, Hind was basically guaranteed a spot in the Five Ship Plan. Just like Barry Barr, he was instantly attracted to Dorothy Voorhees and her jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and intelligence. Before their ships take off, Hind conspires to join her on Number Three or transfer her to Number Four. However, his scheme eventually fails. Before Three lifts off, he sends Dorothy a letter pretending to be Barry’s imaginary wife from Philadelphia, asking her to stay away from him so his wife and children can still have him. This works for a time in keeping Dorothy away from Barry. Once again, however, Hind’s scheme ultimately fails once they arrive on Venus and Dorothy is near Barry again. \nWhile on Number Four, Hind refuses to exit the spaceship to work on the meteor shards, citing his assigned status. When Barry volunteers, Hind is secretly happy, almost as if he wants him out of the picture for good. \nAfter their arrival on Venus, Dorothy stays away from Barry for a time, but eventually runs into his hospital room and embraces him. She discovers that Hind’s letter was a lie and rushes into Barry’s arms for good. Presumably, once Hind discovered this, he dismantled Barry’s life-saving moisture machine and locked him in the room to die. \n",
"Robson Hind is the jet chief of Four, the fourth of the five ships sent to Venus under the Five Ship Plan. As a member of the Five Ship Plan, he has been vetted both for his jobs skills and his personality and sense of responsibility, but he is uncouth, unethical, and self-centered. He is the son of the business manager of the Hoskins Corporation which holds a large share in the Five Ship Plan. Additionally, he is competing with Barry Barr for the affections of the beautiful young woman, Dorothy Voorhees. Dorothy likes Barry, but she can’t help but be impressed by the smooth-talking Hinds whose wealth enables him to entertain her in style. When Dorothy is assigned to ship Three, Hinds tries to have her reassigned to Four and then himself to Three, neither of which works. \n\tAlthough Hinds knows his job, he is questionable in his suitability for the Five Ship Plan. As Number Four descends toward Venus, a meteorite sideswipes the ship, and a few pieces break off and fuse themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing of a nozzle, causing the driver to overload, sending heat and radiation into the compartment and killing the person in there. Once they can enter the compartment, Hinds hangs back and enters last. He is responsible for changing the accelerators and afterward throws the switch confidently only to have the system almost overload again before he switches it off. Hinds determines the problem is metal in the field, which will require someone to go outside the ship and cut it out. This is a dangerous job because of the high levels of Sigma concentration that are known to kill lab animals with just a brief exposure. What isn’t known is how well a spacesuit will protect a human. Everyone waits to see who will volunteer, and their eyes turn to Hinds, who quickly reminds them he is assigned and therefore not expendable. Barry Barr volunteers since he is unassigned.\n\tWhen Barr is under the doctor’s care, he desperately wants to see Dorothy, and when she finally comes, she claims she can’t stay away because she loves him too much, even if he has a wife and child. She received a letter just before Three blasted off. Barr isn’t married, and he strongly suspects that Hinds is behind the fake letter. Hinds is also responsible for almost killing Barr by cutting the power and water to the humidifier that keeps him alive and locking the door so Barr can’t escape.\n",
"Robson Hind is the jet chief of Number Four as well as the electronics expert for Venus Colony. He is young, handsome, and wealthy. The sole child of the business manager of Hoskins Corporation, Hind's position with the Five Ship Plan could be attributed to the fact that his father's business held a large share of it. When the meteorite strikes Number Four, Hind immediately says he cannot go outside to fix it because he has an assignment on the ship, and he is non-expendable. He barely conceals a smile when Barry offers to take care of it instead. Like Barry, Hind is attracted to Dorothy Voorhees. However, in spite of his charms and his lavish doting, Hind fails to capture Dorothy's heart because she senses something she does not like in his personality. This shrewdness of character perception turns out to be quite accurate when Hind writes a letter to Dorothy pretending to be Barry's non-existent wife revealing herself to Dorothy and telling her that Barry also has a child in Philadelphia. This only delays Dorothy's confession of love to Barry, so Hind steps up his efforts to keep the two separated. He locks Barry in his room and disables the machine that had been supplying Venusian air for Barry to breathe. Although Hind's efforts to kill Barry fail, he does succeed in driving him away into the ocean where Barry will presumably stay.",
"Robson Hind is a member of the crew of Number Four, where he serves as the jet chief, and will be the electronics expert for Venus Colony. He has bold, handsome features and gives the impression of being strong without being large. Hind is the one who cuts the power lines to prevent a second blowback while they're all trying to find a solution for their freefall. He is looked to for guidance throughout the problem-solving due to his leadership position, and was the best candidate to clear the Sigma radiation but defered the role to Barry Barr to protect himself. There is tension because Barry and Robson both like Dorothy Voorhees. Dorothy is under the impression that Barry is married to someone else, and it turns out Robson Hind likely is the one who planted this misinformation in her mind through writing a false letter."
] |
63932
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THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lost Tribes of Venus by Erik Fennel.
Relevant chunks:
THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Engineer Barry Barr is one of the chosen few to ride on Number Three to Venus. His beloved Dorothy Voorhees would have been riding with him, but Barry had a piece of scaffolding drop on his ankle. Unable to make the first flight, Barry hops onto Number Four instead. \nOn the journey to Venus, a small meteor crashes into their hull at several hundreds of miles an hour. The effect is immediate: Ryan is killed in the jet room and traces of the meteor are stuck in the field. Barry wakes up when the alarm bells are sounded, and rushes to join the rest of the crew to figure out what’s going on. Nick Podtaguine is steering the ship with emergency controls while Captain Reno looks on. Once the jet room stabilized, Captain Reno opens the doors to find Ryan’s body and ruin. After fixing all that they could, Reno hit the accelerator, only to watch in dismay at it soared out of proportions. Captain Reno cut off the power, realizing that the meteor had left metal particles in the cylinder of force. He asks for volunteers to work outside of the ship and remove all traces of the meteor. No one volunteers at first because of how dangerous a task it is; Sigma radiation affects man in ways still unknown and incurable. After Robson Hind turns the task down, Barry volunteers. He steps outside in his spacesuit equipped to block radiation and removes them with the chisel. \nOnce he returns inside, he falls asleep and wakes a day later already feeling the effects of the radiation. His symptoms only increase: dryness, heat, and breathing difficulties. He faints upon standing and realizes that the Sigma radiation had seeped into his spacesuit. \nFour heads toward Venus while Barry suffers from an insatiable thirst. Finally, upon landing, they throw open the doors to let in the muggy Venusian air, and Barry feels like he can breathe again. Two and Three welcome them, and Barry throws his arms around Dorothy before fainting. Dr. Carl Jensen gives him water which Barry inhales. He’s growing gills on the sides of his neck, and dry air is becoming more intolerable. \nBarry asks Nick to build him a machine to let in moisture, allowing him to breathe better. He grows webbed fingers and toes. Dorothy doesn’t visit him while in hospital until she can’t bear it anymore. She bursts open the door and reveals she still loves him even though he has a wife and family back in Philadelphia. Barry reveals the falsehood and believes that Hind sent her a letter detailing this lie. One night, he wakes up to realize his moisture machine was broken and the door locked. He escapes by breaking the window and runs to the water. He dives in and inhales the water. Worms attack him, but he swims away to the ocean. He battles humanoid Venusians and kills one of them. He rescues a girl from being robbed. \n",
"People are settling Venus, and those aboard ship Four have a close call when the ship is struck by a meteorite that damages the accelerators and leaves metal in a shaft. After the accelerator is repaired under the leadership of Robson Hind, they discover the metal. Barry Barr volunteers to do the spacewalk to remove the metal that is wedged in the shaft since he is unassigned on this voyage. Assigned members are considered unexpendable, so they are expected to stay and protect the ship. The spacewalk is dangerous due to the high concentration of deadly Sigma outside. Although their spacesuits have Kendall shields, no one knows how effective they are. Animals briefly exposed to Sigma die almost right away. Barr completes the work and returns to a hero’s welcome. \n\tSoon, Barr begins feeling strange. He’s ravenously hungry, extremely thirsty, and having difficulty breathing. He tries to eat, but the sense that the air is extraordinarily hot and dry makes it harder for him to breathe, and he passes out. However, when the ship reaches Venus, Barr breathes in the hot, humid air, and his breathing becomes much less labored. Feeling stronger, he seeks out the woman he loves, Dorothy Voorhees, who arrived at the colony on Three. They kiss, but then he passes out again, and when he wakes, Barr asks for water which he pours into his lungs. The doctor tells him that would normally kill a person. Barr scratches his neck and notices something growing there, which the doctor identifies as the beginnings of gills.\n\tBarr asks his friend to gather materials and build him a humidifier in the infirmary. With this device, Barr can breathe better. Barr longs to see Dorothy, especially since he knows Robson Hind is probably wooing her; the two men have been competing for her affections. At last, Dorothy comes to see him, claiming she loves him and can’t stay away even though he is married and has a child. Barr isn’t married and suspects that Hind planted the story to win Dorothy for himself. Later that night, Barr awakens, unable to breathe. An investigation shows that his humidifier’s water and power lines have been cut, and the door to his room is locked from the outside. Barr knocks out the window with a chair, runs outside, and dives into the slough. There, at last, he can breathe. He realizes that he has become a water breather, meaning he is no longer completely human. He stays in the slough until some worms start biting his eyelids, then makes his way to the ocean. He wants to stay close to the colony even though he can’t breathe on land anymore, but suddenly a group of human-like creatures with webbed fingers and toes like his descend on him and begin attacking with their spears and tube weapons. He kills one but sees two other males capture a female, and Barr attacks her attackers.\n",
"Barry Barr is a structural engineer serving on Number Four, a ship taking part in the Five Ship Plan headed for Venus. The Five Ship Plan had been designed to avoid filling one ship to critical mass with fuel; instead, five ships would fill their tanks as much as safely possible, land on Venus, and the ship that had sustained the least amount of damage would take on the fuel reserves of the other four for the return trip to Earth unless a successful colony could be established on Venus. Barry had originally been assigned to Number Three, but an ankle injury caused him to take the later ship. A meteorite strikes Number Four, and since Barry is unassigned and therefore expendable, he goes outside the ship to remove the debris in spite of the dangerous presence of Sigma radiation, which had been known to kill animals. As he is outside, he thinks about Dorothy Voorhees, a toxicologist on Number Three with whom Barry is in love. The wealthy jet chief Robson Hind is also in love with Dorothy, although Dorothy only has a shallow interest in what he has to offer. Barry's spacesuit offers minimal protection against the radiation, and when he returns, he discovers he has indeed developed a kind of sickness that causes him to struggle to breathe in the ship's air. When Number Four finally lands on Venus, Barry is surprised to discover he can breathe much easier in the thick, humid atmosphere there. As Number Four reconnects with the makeshift colony the previous ships have constructed, Barry is reunited with Dorothy briefly before passing out. Dr. Carl Jensen examines Barry and keeps him on bed rest for several days. When Barry awakens, he recruits his friend Nick to help him fashion a machine that will transfer the Venusian atmosphere into his room so that he may breathe easier. Dr. Jensen is shocked at the physical changes in Barry; over time, he grows gills and webbed feet. Finally, Dorothy visits him in his room and reveals her true love for him; she had been hesitant to do so because she had received a communication from his wife in Philadelphia revealing Barry was married with a child. This news surprises Barry since he is not married; Robson must have written the letter to drive a wedge between him and Dorothy. When Barry awakens the next day, he discovers his door is locked and the machine drawing Venusian air into his room has been shut off. Desperate to breathe, Barry breaks out of his room and jumps into the nearby slough, where he is attacked by hundreds of hostile worms. He swims further out into an ocean, amazed by his ability to breathe underwater. Underwater, Barry runs into two Venusians who attack him and a female Venusian. Barry helps her and saves himself by fighting off the attackers.",
"The spaceship Number Four is in free fall; its crew is doing everything they can to get it working again. As they tend to various systems, the outside threat is brought to the reader's attention: Sigma radiation, which is not well understood by humans but it is known to be dangerous. Barry Barr is selected to leave the ship to clear the meteorite debris for the sake of the crew. He works on cutting the meteorite debris, reflecting on the growing tension between himself and Robson Hind, the jet chief, over their mutual interest in Dorothy Voorhees, the dietician and toxicologist. Barry wakes up later feeling like he doesn't have enough air, and searches for a meal. As he tries to eat, he realizes he can't breathe, and it occurs to him that his suit's Kendall-shield, which was supposed to protect him from Sigma radiation, had leaked. Nobody knew quite what would happen to Barry after exposure to Sigma radiation. His breathing got worse over time and nobody could do anything for him without a doctor. The ship successfully lands on Venus, and Barry finds that the humid atmosphere makes it easier for him to breathe. He finds Dorothy, kissing her before Robson Hind shows up, then passes out and wakes up in a doctor's office. Barry inhales the water he was handed (literally ingesting it), surprising the doctor, who doesn't know what to do for Barry. They notice gills on Barry's neck, and Barry passes out again. Barry asks Nick Podtaguine, the mechanic, for help in building a machine. It seems Barry is now known for having saved the ship, so Nick figures he can get all the materials he needs, which only took him eight hours. The machine keeps Barry's room wet while keeping the excess water off of the floor. Barry recovers some energy now that he can breathe, and dreams of Dorothy Voorhees as he rests. He starts to develop webs on his hands and feet, and a full set of gills, but Dorothy still comes to visit him one day after having avoided Barry the entire time he'd been under the doctor's care. This helps his mood, but then he wakes up one day finding his machine turned off, and is unable to escape. Eventually he breaks a plastic window but the air doesn't have enough moisture for him, so he breaks out and jumps into the water. He faints again, inhales, and realizes his gills work just fine, which also makes him realize he is officially no longer human. He swims away from some worms who are interested in his eyelids, and eventually makes it to the ocean even though he wants to stay near the people. His lungs have not adjusted yet so he sinks again, awoken by yells of people. Barry finds a creature who looked a lot like Barry, with webbed limbs and pieces of clothing. The story ends in a skirmish with various Venusians and one other Earthman. "
] |
63932
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THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
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Describe Venus and the creatures on its surface.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lost Tribes of Venus by Erik Fennel.
Relevant chunks:
THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
Question:
Describe Venus and the creatures on its surface.
Answer:
|
[
"Venus is a hot and muggy planet, most comparable to certain areas of South America. The air is so moist and hot that many of the colonists when arrived felt as though they were melting or wading through a swamp. Much of the planet is covered in swamps and marshes, while only a small portion is made up of solid rock or land. The air teems with buzzing insects and creatures roam the surface of the planet. Large vegetarian Venusian creatures roam solid ground, and, though they aren’t going to eat the humans, their humongous size can make them a danger to have around. Different creatures reside in the swamps and oceans as well. Flesh-eating worms lie deep in the swamps, while humanoid Venusians live out in the open ocean. ",
"Venus has a climate like a tropical swamp, sweltering and extremely humid, and the air is thick with the foul odor of decaying plants. Much of the planet is covered with swamps and mud so that the colony has to set up on a rock ledge that rises out of the marsh. Days on Venus last 82 hours. Trees grow in the marshes, and there are areas of quicksand covered with green algae that look like grassy plains. Some plants are edible by humans, but there is also a plant with a poisonous thorn that killed a man. Plants grow rapidly due to the climate. The stagnant slough drains into a waveless, saltwater ocean. Approximately half of the surface is covered with water. The land areas are either rocky ledges or jungle-covered swamps. Tests indicate that there are traces of oil and radioactive minerals. \n\tMany different types of creatures live on Venus. In the marsh, there are creatures that slither and crawl, swim, and fly. Gigantic insects fly around but are harmless and avoid the humans. There are varied creatures in the swamps; the ones that look harmless tend to be the most venomous. One particularly interesting creature somewhat resembles the brontosauri of Earth and are amphibious, armored monsters. They are vegetarians and don’t bother the humans except that they can be clumsy and step on or fall against a human structure damaging it. In the early days, there is no sign of intelligent life, but some of the men report having a sense of being watched. One particularly bothersome creature is a fat worm that lives in the slough; when Barr is in the slough, these worms attach themselves to his eyelids and bite them, clinging to him like leeches.\n\tIn the ocean, however, Barr encounters human-like creatures like himself, with webbed fingers and toes. They wield weapons like spears and other tubelike weapons that fire underwater, creating a trail of bubbles as they move rapidly toward the prey. These human-like beings attack Barr, and he notices they wear clothes. They bleed a red substance when they are injured and have bones that Barr feels when he strikes one with a knife. There are both male and female creatures.\n",
"Venus is hot and extremely humid and covered with the aroma of decaying vegetation. The complete opposite of Mars' deserted, dry landscape, Venus is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna. Half of the planet is covered in water, including marshes, swamps, sloughs, and vast oceans with murky water. There are few areas of rock ledges where the crews of the Five Ship Plan build their colony. Many kinds of harmless insects fly about the swamps, but there are several poisonous plants, one of which kills a crew member from Number One. A species of massive, swamp-dwelling, amphibious, dinosaur-like creatures move about close to the makeshift colony; because of their lack of intelligence and immense, armored bodies, the creatures can be quite dangerous and actually have damaged one of the colony's buildings. When Barry first dives into the slough, he is immediately attacked by a horde of worms attempting to burrow into his skin. Later, he discovers the native Venusians, who look like humans, carry spears and tube-weapons, and move rapidly through the water with powerful bodies and webbed hands. ",
"Venus' surface is covered in mists and creatures unfamiliar to people from Earth. Dorothy Voorhees is a toxicologist and dietitian specifically assigned to the mission to guide the humans through the flora and fauna of Venus in a way that their digestive systems wouldn't entirely object to. The fact that she was hired points to the humans knowing they would face unknowns. The plants that had been discovered before Barry arrived were edible but not interesting. What looked like a grassy plain was really quicksand covered in algae, which meant the colonists had lost many supplies while making this discovery. The wood from the trees was used to create crafts, and various types of buildings and support structures. There is one piece of solid ground (rock, specifically) that the men were able to find, though it was still surrounded by swamps. In the heavy mists of the humid swamplands are a variety of insects that were far more annoying than harmful. There are larger creatures, too, the most exciting being large swamp creatures that resembled dinosaurs, who were vegetarian but large and dumb enough to pose great danger to the humans. \n"
] |
63932
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THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
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Describe the Five Ship Plan.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lost Tribes of Venus by Erik Fennel.
Relevant chunks:
THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
Question:
Describe the Five Ship Plan.
Answer:
|
[
"After discovering Mars and the moon, humanity decided to conquer yet another planet: Venus. However, Venus was too far away to safely carry the amount of fuel needed for a round trip mission. So, the Five Ship Plan evolved. Five rockets were to fly to Venus at separate intervals. Those who landed first would build a colony to live in and welcome the others to the surface of the planet. Once all five had arrived, they would figure out which ship was in the best shape and transfer all remaining fuel to that one. The colonists would head back home if Venus was completely uninhabitable, or remain on the planet for the time being, living out their lives on the colony. ",
"The Five Ship Plan was devised as a way to provide travel to and from Venus and is a joint venture between the government and private groups. It is a clever solution to the problem of ships only holding enough fuel for a one-way trip to Venus. Under the plan, five ships make the journey carrying as much fuel as they possibly can and loaded with various cargo needed for survival on the planet. When all five are on Venus, the ship in the best condition will receive the remaining fuel left in the other ships to return to Earth. Barry Barr’s job will then be to repurpose the materials of the other ships into whatever the colony needs, such as a landing dock and launching ramp. Members of the Five Ship Plan are chosen for their expertise in their fields and their sense of responsibility. They are expected to be so committed to the mission that they are willing to sacrifice themselves so that the mission can succeed. Much of the code of the plan is based on the ancient Earth code for the sea and requires members to perform actions “for the safety of the ship.”",
"The Five Ship Plan had been designed by a joint enterprise of government and private groups to establish the Venus Colony after humans successfully visited Mars. Because the fuel requirements to make the round trip from Earth to Venus would bring a ship to critical mass, five ships would fill their tanks as much as safely possible, land on Venus, and the ship that had sustained the least amount of damage would take on the fuel reserves of the other four for the return trip to Earth unless a successful colony could be established on Venus. The crews for the five ships needed to be responsible individuals and Barry was chosen for his familiarity with tropical conditions and his abilities as a structural engineer. His job in the Venus Colony would be to repurpose the ships that would be left behind on Venus into whatever would be needed as well as to study native Venusian materials. Dorothy Voorhees was the crew's toxicologist and dietician. Other crew members included Dr. Carl Jensen, Robson Hind, Nick Podtiaguine, and Captain Reno.",
"The Five Ship Plan was developed by various private and government groups in an attempt to blow past the existing limitations on space travel. These are dangerous expeditions manned by specialists with strong senses of responsibility who the leaders of the Plan expect to be able to maintain themselves and their crews for long enough to make it to Venus, where the leftover fuel from all five ships would be combined to one for a return journey. The specifics of the return trip would depend on who made it to Venus, what they found there, and what they could establish in the Colony."
] |
63932
|
THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS
By ERIK FENNEL
On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile swamp meets hostile sea ... there did Barry Barr—Earthman transmuted—swap his Terran heritage for the deep dark waters of Tana; for the strangely beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the idling drivers.
It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.
In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment before the main circuit breakers could clack open.
The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.
Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.
The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open. Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was close behind him.
Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony, hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had lost its usual ruddiness.
Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared minor. They had been lucky.
"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said meaningfully.
Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to order his crew into action.
It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite Hind's shouted orders.
At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he threw in the accelerator switch.
The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing, and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.
" There's metal in the field! " His voice was high and unsteady.
Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.
Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.
"It must be cleared. From the outside."
Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies unpredictably altered.
Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration. But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized gravitations.
The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a particularly unpleasant form of death.
Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.
"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were more trouble later...." His face was pasty.
Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the logical man.
"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and unassigned personnel.
For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body, built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power, balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.
He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.
But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a sense of responsibility.
"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.
For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his hand.
Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three—in fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus alive—
The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.
Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on the events that had brought him here.
First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been inherently poor.
Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step—to Mars. But men had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.
Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.
But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien conditions.
On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition. That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.
Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions, he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form was most needed—most particularly a launching ramp—and to study native Venusian materials.
Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.
Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of loneliness had come to an end.
She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone, and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.
But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.
The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.
Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.
But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.
He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into stuttering action.
Then it was done.
As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to start according to calculations.
Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.
"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.
Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job of work out there."
Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.
"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"
Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off watch a few minutes ago."
Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a handout."
He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to breathe.
He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.
The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!
Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead. The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress. Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.
A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was, felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.
Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created support of flame.
"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it! Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"
The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled, steadied.
Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.
"Airlock open. Both doors."
Venusian air poured in.
"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.
"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.
It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying vegetation.
But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.
The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.
Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out of the marsh. The Colony!
Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp, extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.
Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk. Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one particular figure among the men and women who waited.
"Dorothy!" he said fervently.
Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.
Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.
By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
"Water!" Barry croaked.
The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water directly into his lungs.
"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What are my chances? On the level."
Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing—not a damned solitary thing—I can do. It's something new to medical science."
Barry lay still.
"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor continued, "and you know as much—more about your condition than I do. If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems to give you relief."
Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each side itched infuriatingly.
"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"
"Those things seem to be—" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."
Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond shock.
"But there must be—"
Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.
II
Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr. Jensen had mentioned during a second visit—but for that to happen he must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine. Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp, malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though she were with him—her face with the exotic high cheek-bones—her eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair—lips that seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to fulfil—her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy from some venturesome Irishman—her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog, the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last, beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm, almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it, and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel the beasts.
The most important question—that of the presence or absence of intelligent, civilized Venusians—remained unanswered. Some of the men reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have established contact.
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming. Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted off—oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child. I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I—think—I—know—who—wrote—that—letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead, cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again. A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden Venusian air poured in—but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the brackish, silt-clouded water.
III
Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless void between Earth and Venus.
Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat worm between his fingers.
Then dozens of them—hundreds—were upon him from all sides. He was wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his eyelids.
For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.
Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one the worms dropped off.
He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier here, and clearer.
He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of direction.
He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and ceased. He sank.
Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.
Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat. One figure drifted limply bottomward.
Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the Earthman.
Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.
Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking and clawing.
Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.
Human—or nearly so—the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face was coarse and savage.
It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched a short tube from its belt.
Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.
Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone. He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.
Barry stared through the reddening water.
Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's spear from the mud and raised it defensively.
But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the other was upon her from behind.
One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.
One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic necklace the girl wore but it did not break.
He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear. The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.
Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.
Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in its belly.
The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.
Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.
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Describe the new world order and the Equalization Laws.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg.
Relevant chunks:
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
Question:
Describe the new world order and the Equalization Laws.
Answer:
|
[
"In the year 2232, the Earth’s population of humans had maxed out at seven billion. This huge influx of people and steady population growth caused major poverty, starvation, and trade/supply issues. For these reasons and more, the Equalization Law was implemented in order to contain humanity and limit population growth. One such rule under this new world order was the Equalization Law where all newborn babies must be presented before they are two weeks old to be examined. If they do not have any congenital defects or carry any unwanted genes, they will be allowed to live. If not, they will be committed to euthanization, otherwise known as Happysleep. As well, several thousand members of the elderly population were euthanized, as they were already on death’s doorstep. Thousands of men were sterilized in order to prevent any insufficient offspring, and those that were ill or handicapped in some way were also euthanized. \nAs for overcrowding, the Bureau of Population Equalization (Popeek) also relocates certain groups of people to more empty settings. For example, Roy Walton set up a relocation for several thousand people in Belgium to the empty areas of Patagonia. \n",
"The Equalization Laws were proposed for legislation by Mr. FitzMaugham fifty years earlier, and when it passed, he was made director of the organization in charge of administering the laws. In the new world order and under the Equalization Laws, the Bureau of Population Equalization is tasked with redistributing the population to make the population density more balanced. It also manages the population numbers by identifying children genetically predisposed to medical conditions deemed unsuited for life and euthanizes them (euphemistically called sending them to Happysleep). The Bureau also identifies other unsuitable (“substandard”) people for euthanasia, such as the very old and terminally ill. And subnormal males are sterilized to prevent them from procreating and passing on their traits. This “cleaning out” of the population is known as “Weeding the Garden” and was voted on by the population. These steps are considered necessary until more space is available for humans, either through terraforming Venus or opening the stars to mankind. Both projects are underway but not fully operational yet. \n",
"In this version of Earth in the 23rd century, the population is so large that people are moved from high-density areas to lower-density areas when possible, but more drastic measures are being put in place to control the population. Six weeks before the story starts, in the year 2232, the Bureau of Population Equalization is founded to coordinate a lot of these efforts. Another major effort of theirs is a project called Happysleep, which euthanizes children who are genetically susceptible to certain diseases. In order to get rid of tuberculosis, for instance, they are trying to kill off people with the \"TB-susceptible genetic traits\". The Equalization Law criminalizes saving the life of a potentially-tubercular child, which Walton knows when he leaves his office after his conversation with Lyle Prior. This same group also sterilizes men to the same effect. The main way that the Equalization Laws that govern these decisions work is that children have to go to a local clinic within two weeks of birth, and this is when these decisions are made. The other major way these Laws contribute to the story is that these are the Laws that Roy Walton is breaking when he decides to save Philip Prior's life.",
"In order to deal with the world's overpopulation problem, Senator FitzMaugham had fought for the establishment of the Bureau of Population Equalization, or Popeek, in order to oversee the process of balancing out overcrowded areas with parts of the world with smaller populations. For example, when Belgium's population becomes too untenable, Roy requests a report on the viability of sending a number of them to live in Patagonia, where the population density remains low. In addition to the process of equalization, the more controversial measure of euthanasia in the form of \"Happysleep\" takes place at Euthanasia Centers around the world to wipe out adults and children considered \"substandard\" because of genetic diseases, physical disabilities, mental challenges, etc. The Equalization Laws also require every newborn child to be examined at a local clinic to determine if they are suitable for a birth certificate or if they will be scheduled for Happysleep. Roughly one in ten thousand is scheduled for the euthanasia procedure. Saving Philip Prior's life would be considered a criminal act under the Equalization Laws, but Roy Walton does it anyway, swayed by Lyle's argument that if he had been euthanized as a baby because of his tuberculosis, the world would never have his poetry."
] |
50441
|
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg.
Relevant chunks:
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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[
"Roy Walton is the Assistant Administrator of the Bureau of Population Equalization, otherwise known as Popeek. In the six weeks that they have been working, thousands of people have been euthanized, sterilized, and relocated in order to curb population growth and overcrowding. Roy Walton arrives at his desk, filled with papers, and settles into his miserable job. He asks for a relocation of the people of central Belgium to Patagonia before his receptionist alerts him Mr. Prior is here to see him. He refuses, but Mr. Prior sneaks through security and the unlocked door–Walton’s fault–and demands his attention. He is a famous poet, one Walton admires. He asks Walton to save his son who is to be euthanized for being tubercular. Walton turns him down, but after Prior leaves, his words swim in his head. He realizes he wants to save his baby, and so he sets off to do just that. He runs into his boss, Director FitzMaugham in the elevator and tries to lie his way through the encounter. He narrowly succeeds but is left with the feeling that Director FitzMaughan knew more than he was letting on. Walton gets off at the 20th floor and breezes past the receptionist to input Philp Porter into the computer. A series of cards come out, detailing all the baby’s specifics as well as the tubercular diagnosis. He deletes the cause for euthanization and inputs the new data into the system. He comes back clear. \nHoping no one saw him, he walks down past the hall of babies and chats with the doctor, asking where his brother, another doctor, is. Evidently, his brother is running analytics, so Walton is safe for now. He speaks with the executioner, Falbrough, and tells him to double-check every baby before euthanization, due to an unfortunate incident in Europe. Falbrough agrees, and Walton quickly slips back upstairs to his office. Worrying about his actions that day, Walton gets a call from Falbrough informing him that there was a mistake, and they saved a baby’s life that day. Walton tells him to keep it under wraps, and he quickly hangs up. Walton has now committed a felony, and he’s wondering what the long-term effects will be. His brother, Fred, calls him and tells him that he knows what he did. By accessing confidential information (a crime in and of itself), Fred knows that Roy saved that baby’s life illegally. He holds it over his head and asks for a favor in return, as well as silence on Roy’s end. The story ends with Roy’s fate up in the air as well as the fate of the new world order. \n",
"In the 23rd century, Earth is overpopulated with 7 billion people. Until Venus terraforming is up and running and travel to stars is feasible, the world’s citizens have approved Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia plan to remove substandard people from society. The Bureau of Population Equalization is working to distribute the population more evenly, removing people from overpopulated areas and resettling them in sparsely populated areas. Roy Walton is the assistant administrator of the Bureau and makes decisions about moving groups of people. While these decisions bother him, he tries to follow the director’s maxim: to stay sane, he must think of the people as pawns, not human beings. In his office, facing three-foot mounds of paperwork, Roy can disassociate himself from the humans whose lives he is impacting.\n\tSuddenly, however, he is asked to meet with a Mr. Prior, whose two-week-old son is scheduled for euthanasia (Happysleep). He refuses to see Prior because these decisions are irrevocable, but Prior makes his way into Roy’s office anyway, and Roy recognizes him as a famous poet whose work he admires. Prior informs Roy that his son is committed to Happysleep because he is potentially tubercular; Prior informs Roy that he was tubercular as a child but was cured. And he reminds Roy that if euthanasia had been practiced a generation ago, his poetry wouldn’t exist. Roy tells Prior he cannot help him, but after Prior leaves, Roy is haunted. \n\tRoy decides to save Prior’s baby, convincing himself that saving one child won’t break the system, and makes his way to the euthanasia department. He takes the lift tube where he meets the director, who invites Roy to have a coffee break with him and asks if Mr. Prior met with Roy. The director says Prior tried to see him but that he referred him to Roy. When Roy turns down the coffee break and exits the lift on the euthanasia floor, he is sure the director knows what he is doing. Roy pulls the information on the baby and rewrites it, omitting the 3f2 designation: tubercular-prone. Roy also notifies the euthanasia doctor of a new policy, effective immediately, of checking the computer records for all babies before euthanasia due to a tragic error in Europe yesterday.\n\tRoy returns to his office and receives two significant phone calls. First, the euthanasia doctor for babies contacts him to let him know one baby scheduled for Happysleep that morning was indeed not due for it. The second call is from his brother, who works in the euthanasia department. When he learned that Roy had used the computer earlier and of the “mistake” for one of the babies, he requested a transcript of Roy’s work on the computer, so he knows of Roy’s crime. Roy and his brother have a hostile relationship, so Roy now has to worry about his brother revealing his crime, even though he says he won’t since Roy got him the job with the Bureau.\n",
"This story takes place in the 23rd century on a heavily overcrowded Earth. The main character, Roy Walton, is the assistant administrator of the Bureau of Population Equalization. In his own office in this ugly building, at a desk piled high with more reports than he could handle, he starts to look through them and responded to one. Because the Bureau is fairly new, procedures are also still being developed. Walton's staff lets him know someone is here to see him about a Happysleep commitment (meaning someone is going to be euthanized), and Lyle Prior bursts into the office. Walton lets him stay to have a meeting but kicks his guards out: it turns out Prior is a poet who Walton recognizes. They have a hard conversation about Lyle's son, a two-week-old who is genetically susceptible to tuberculosis and is thus sentenced to be euthanized. Lyle points out that he had tuberculosis as a child, and if he had been euthanized instead of cured, his poetry would not exist. Walton has to sit alone with this, as a huge fan of Prior's work, and thinks about the thousands who had been killed or sterilized in the six weeks his office had been open so far. Walton nervously decides he has to do something even though it would be illegal, and heads out of his office, promising himself that Prior's child is the only one he would break the law for. Walton runs into Director FitzMaugham who notices he looks preoccupied; they talk about Prior and FitzMaugham reminds Walton that if they made one exception to their rules, the entire system would fall. When Walton gets off the elevator, he worries that his destination has given away his mission, but heads into the room with the euthanasia files. After looking through Philip's files, he realizes he only has half an hour to act; he re-writes Philip's file to remove the euthanasia recommendation, but still has to retrieve the baby unnoticed. The doctors are surprised to see Walton in the clinic, especially because they'd seen the Director earlier as well. Walton asks if his younger brother, another doctor, is around, so that he can try to avoid him before continuing to the execution chamber to find Philip. Walton runs into Falbrough, the executioner, and tells him to double-check all of the files in case a mistake had been made, hoping that the updated file will take care of the issue for him. Walton returns to his office and gets a call from Falbrough who wasn't sure what to do about Philip, whose record did not have a euthanasia recommendation--Walton tells him to keep it quiet and to get the child back to his parents. As he let it sink in that he had broken the law, Walton's brother calls. Fred had noticed that Roy had messed with the computer system and knows everything that happened; Roy panics after hanging up the phone.",
"In the year 2232, the world has voted for the implementation of Equalization Laws and the establishment of the Bureau of Population Equalization, also called Popeek, in order to address the problem of overpopulation. Roy Walton is the second-in-command at Popeek, and his job is to oversee the population equalization process, which redistributes people from overcrowded cities into lower population density areas. In addition, he is responsible for the administration of the global Euthanasia Centers. These clinics carry out the controversial \"Happysleep\" procedure, which is effectively euthanasia, upon children and adults considered substandard. Having been appointed to his position by Director FitzMaugham (whom he had also worked for when FitzMaugham was a senator fighting for Equalization Laws), Roy is a reliable steward of his job, and he barricades himself in his office so he doesn't have to face those opposed to Happysleep. As Roy goes about his busy workday, including ordering a reporting on the feasibility of transferring Belgian citizens to Patagonia, the annunciator notifies him that Lyle Prior, the famous poet, is there to visit him. Lyle's son, Philip, has been scheduled for Happysleep because he had been born tubercular. As a fan of Lyle's poetry, Roy is pleased with his visit, but he does not grant Lyle's request. To do so would risk his career and subvert the work of Popeek and the Equalization Laws in general. After Lyle departs, Roy thinks about his argument that if Lyle had been euthanized for the same reason when he was a child, the world would have been denied his poetry. In spite of Roy's reservations, he decides to spare Philip, but only Philip. He takes an elevator down to the Euthanasia Clinic and is joined by Director FitzMaugham, who acts like he knows what Roy is up to. Roy proceeds to the files room at the clinic and accesses Philip's record on the computer; he removes the euthanasia recommendation from his record and proceeds to the area where Dr. Falbrough administers the fatal procedure. He informs Falbrough that a new policy requires baby's records to be checked again prior to being euthanized to avoid any errors. Upon returning to his office, Roy received a call from his brother Fred, who works as a doctor in the clinic. Fred says he knows Roy edited Philip's record, but he will keep it a secret and call it even since Roy had secured him the job in the clinic in the first place."
] |
50441
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MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
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Who is Philip Prior, and what happens to him throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg.
Relevant chunks:
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
Question:
Who is Philip Prior, and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Philip Prior is the son of Lyle Prior and Ava Leonard Prior. He was born small, a little over 5 pounds, and carries the gene for tuberculosis. Within this new society, this genetic mutation means that Philip Prior has to be euthanized and sent to Happysleep. At only two weeks old, he has been sentenced to death. His father, Lyle Prior the poet, comes to the office of Roy Walton to try and save his son’s life. Although he is unsuccessful at first, his words about what his son could become stuck with Roy and caused him to save Philip’s life. Philip Prior is incredibly significant because his life and sentencing caused Roy Walton to make the first crack in the framework, commit a felony by saving his life, and potentially sentence himself to a failed career and life. ",
"Philip Prior is the two-week-old son of the famous poet Lyle Prior and his wife, Ava. With the Equalization Laws, all children have to be examined and tested at a clinic within two weeks of birth to determine whether they are healthy enough and genetically suited to live. If they are, they are given a certificate; if not, the certificate is denied, and the child is euthanized (sent to Happysleep) that day. Philip’s test shows that he is 3f2, tubercular-prone. The child’s father goes to see Mr. Fitzmaugham and then Roy Walton to plead for an exception for his son; Prior explains that he was tubercular when he was a child but that he was subsequently cured. He also reminds Roy to think about what would have happened to his poems if such a law existed when he was born and he had been sent to Happysleep. This thought haunts Roy after Prior leaves his office, and he decides to save Philip Prior, rewriting the child’s medical records card and deleting his condition. The baby is minutes away from death when Roy takes the next step and visits the euthanasia doctor, telling him a fictitious story of a tragic mistake at a European center yesterday and implementing a new policy in effect immediately for checking each baby’s file before operating on it. The doctor calls Roy shortly afterward and exclaims that one of the babies scheduled for Happysleep that morning was, indeed, perfectly healthy and should not be euthanized. Thus, Philip Prior’s life is saved.\n\n\n",
"Philip Prioir is a two-week-old boy, the son of Lyle Prior, the poet who bursts into Roy Walton's office at the beginning of the story. The morning Lyle entered the Bureau, Philip had been committed to Happysleep. Lyle seems to think his son is in perfectly good health, but he has been labeled as potentially tubercular. This is especially shocking to Lyle because he had been tubercular when he was young, but was cured and not euthanized (because the euthanasia laws had not yet been passed). Roy Walton decides he needs to help save Philip, and goes on a secretive mission to do so. Walton changes Philip's record and then has the executioner in the clinic double-check all of the files, which prompts the executioner to think Philip is there by mistake. This lets Roy order him to send Philip back to his parents near the end of the story. ",
"Philip was born May 31, 2232 at New York General Hospital in New York weighing 5lb. 3oz. He is the two-week-old son of Ava and her husband, Melling Prize-winning poet Lyle Prior. Lyle had voted for the creation of Popeek and understood the concept of Weeding the Garden as well as the Euthansia Plan, but he hadn't expected his son would be selected for Happysleep. Therefore, when his son is selected because of a case of tuberculosis, he visits Roy Walton's office to request an audience with him. Lyle implores Roy to spare his son's life and reminds him that had the euthanasia program been around when he was a child, then his poems never would have been written for Roy to enjoy. Although Roy is empathic to Lyle's situation, he refuses to grant his request, knowing that it would cost him his job and perhaps the entire future of Popeek. However, after Lyle leaves, Roy is tortured by Lyle's argument, and he decides to grant Lyle's request. He makes his way to the Euthanasia Clinic & Files floor and accesses Philip Prior's record. After reading the denotations on the record, Roy removes the fatal symbol as well as the euthanasia recommendation from his record. Next, he visits Dr. Falbrough, whose jobs is to administer the euthanasia procedure. He tells Falbrough there is a new procedure designed to keep public opinion positive--prior to starting each procedure, the baby's file must be checked to make sure there is no mistake. In this way, he ensures baby Philip will not be killed. Roy ultimately risks his own career to save Philip's life."
] |
50441
|
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg.
Relevant chunks:
MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"Master of Life and Death by Robert Silverberg takes place on Earth many years in the future, specifically June 10, 2232, or six weeks after the equalization laws were implemented. The story takes place within the confines of the Cullen building, specifically through the twentieth and twenty-ninth floors. It starts in Roy Walton’s office on the twenty-eighth floor, designed à la 22nd Century neo-Victorian style. Roy redesigned his office, changing the lights, windows, and removing the trim, but the room still felt ugly to him. His office has a desk with a firearm strapped to the bottom, and the door features a lock so as to prevent an assassination. He communicates with people through a holographic video call, and papers and assignments are sent to his desk immediately. Throughout the story, Roy travels down the elevator to the 20th floor, otherwise known as the Euthanization Clinic. There is a receptionist there as well as several computers. Different offices house different doctors, but he makes his to the center for babies where the executioner works. The rooms are very sterile and hospital-like. Each baby had its own pen, and several doctors examined them all while parents watched from screens. ",
"The story is set in the 23rd century when the Earth’s population has reached seven billion, and people live in extremely crowded conditions. All of the action in the story takes place in the hundred-story Cullen Building, where the Bureau of Population Equalization takes up the 20th through the 29th floors. The building was built in the 22nd century in a neo-Victorian style that is grossly overdecorated and outdated. The overdone nature of the building itself is symbolic of the foolish recklessness of the population of the last century, which led to massive global overpopulation. The structure and Bureau are outfitted with modern technology, including a pneumochute that rapidly delivers paperwork to its destination. Telephones are equipped with video capability so that callers can see each other as they talk, and a lift tube provides transport between floors. Records are stored in memory tubes, microfilm, and computers. Genetic testing is used to identify children with conditions that make them substandard and require their euthanasia. The Bureau has only been up and running for six weeks, but it has already accumulated an impressive quantity of records and data. Workers have become accustomed to their roles; one glibly reports they had identified seven children for Happysleep that morning, the “biggest haul we’ve had yet.”",
"The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization are in a tall office building that is overdecorated and ugly with a lot of chrome and bright lights. Roy Walton had made some changes to his own office to make it more visually tolerable. Besides these offices, the other part of the story takes place in a records room and in the local clinic where Walton runs into a number of doctors and the executioner, Falbrough. In the clinic, there is an execution hall where the children are sent to be euthanized. Beyond just the physical aspects of the setting, this story takes place in June of the year 2232. At this time, Earth is extremely overpopulated, and the story's events take place around the policies that are being put into place in an attempt to control some of this overpopulation.",
"The story takes place on June 10, 2232 at the offices of the newly-established Bureau of Population Equalization, commonly known as Popeek, which is located on the 20th - 29th floors of the Cullen Building. The Cullen Building has one hundred stories and is crafted in the 22nd century neo-Victorian style. Roy Walton's office is on the 28th floor directly below Director FitzMaugham's, and he has redecorated it to fit his personal taste: He has replaced the sash windows with opaquers and added electroluminescents in place of the old ceiling fixture. Roy's desk is stacked with papers, which continuously arrive through pneumochutes, and he keeps a needler gun in his drawer for protection. An annunciator alerts Roy when he has visitors. Outside Roy's office is an outer office where six secretaries work. He takes an elevator down to the 20th floor where his brother works at the Euthanasia Clinic and Files. The euthanasia file room is thirty feet by twenty feet and filled with Donnerson micro-memory tubes and microfilm records. Popeek has various local offices and euthanasia centers around the world, where people considered substandard are sent on to \"Happysleep.\""
] |
50441
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MASTER of Life and Death
by ROBERT SILVERBERG
ACE BOOKS A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc. All Rights Reserved
For Antigone— Who Thinks We're Property
Printed in U.S.A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
THE MAN WHO RATIONED BABIES
By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room—unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world.
For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies, become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROY WALTON
He had to adopt the motto— the ends justify the means .
FITZMAUGHAM
His reward for devoted service was—an assassin's bullet.
FRED WALTON
His ambition was to fill his brother's shoes—but he underestimated their size.
LEE PERCY
His specialty was sugarcoating bitter pills.
PRIOR
With the pen as his only weapon, could he save his son?
DR. LAMARRE
He died for discovering the secret of immortality.
Contents
I
The offices of the Bureau of Population Equalization, vulgarly known as Popeek, were located on the twentieth through twenty-ninth floors of the Cullen Building, a hundred-story monstrosity typical of twenty-second-century neo-Victorian at its overdecorated worst. Roy Walton, Popeek's assistant administrator, had to apologize to himself each morning as he entered the hideous place.
Since taking the job, he had managed to redecorate his own office—on the twenty-eighth floor, immediately below Director FitzMaugham's—but that had created only one minor oasis in the esthetically repugnant building. It couldn't be helped, though; Popeek was unpopular, though necessary; and, like the public hangman of some centuries earlier, the Bureau did not rate attractive quarters.
So Walton had removed some of the iridescent chrome scalloping that trimmed the walls, replaced the sash windows with opaquers, and changed the massive ceiling fixture to more subtle electroluminescents. But the mark of the last century was stamped irrevocably on both building and office.
Which was as it should be, Walton had finally realized. It was the last century's foolishness that had made Popeek necessary, after all.
His desk was piled high with reports, and more kept arriving via pneumochute every minute. The job of assistant administrator was a thankless one, he thought; as much responsibility as Director FitzMaugham, and half the pay.
He lifted a report from one eyebrow-high stack, smoothed the crinkly paper carefully, and read it.
It was a despatch from Horrocks, the Popeek agent currently on duty in Patagonia. It was dated 4 June 2232 , six days before, and after a long and rambling prologue in the usual Horrocks manner it went on to say, Population density remains low here: 17.3 per square mile, far below optimum. Looks like a prime candidate for equalization.
Walton agreed. He reached for his voicewrite and said sharply, "Memo from Assistant Administrator Walton, re equalization of ..." He paused, picking a trouble-spot at random, "... central Belgium. Will the section chief in charge of this area please consider the advisability of transferring population excess to fertile areas in Patagonia? Recommendation: establishment of industries in latter region, to ease transition."
He shut his eyes, dug his thumbs into them until bright flares of light shot across his eyeballs, and refused to let himself be bothered by the multiple problems involved in dumping several hundred thousand Belgians into Patagonia. He forced himself to cling to one of Director FitzMaugham's oft-repeated maxims, If you want to stay sane, think of these people as pawns in a chess game—not as human beings.
Walton sighed. This was the biggest chess problem in the history of humanity, and the way it looked now, all the solutions led to checkmate in a century or less. They could keep equalizing population only so long, shifting like loggers riding logs in a rushing river, before trouble came.
There was another matter to be attended to now. He picked up the voicewrite again. "Memo from the assistant administrator, re establishment of new policy on reports from local agents: hire a staff of three clever girls to make a précis of each report, eliminating irrelevant data."
It was a basic step, one that should have been taken long ago. Now, with three feet of reports stacked on his desk, it was mandatory. One of the troubles with Popeek was its newness; it had been established so suddenly that most of its procedures were still in the formative stage.
He took another report from the heap. This one was the data sheet of the Zurich Euthanasia Center, and he gave it a cursory scanning. During the past week, eleven substandard children and twenty-three substandard adults had been sent on to Happysleep.
That was the grimmest form of population equalization. Walton initialed the report, earmarked it for files, and dumped it in the pneumochute.
The annunciator chimed.
"I'm busy," Walton said immediately.
"There's a Mr. Prior to see you," the annunciator's calm voice said.
"He insists it's an emergency."
"Tell Mr. Prior I can't see anyone for at least three hours." Walton stared gloomily at the growing pile of paper on his desk. "Tell him he can have ten minutes with me at—oh, say, 1300."
Walton heard an angry male voice muttering something in the outer office, and then the annunciator said, "He insists he must see you immediately in reference to a Happysleep commitment."
"Commitments are irrevocable," Walton said heavily. The last thing in the world he wanted was to see a man whose child or parent had just been committed. "Tell Mr. Prior I can't see him at all."
Walton found his fingers trembling; he clamped them tight to the edge of his desk to steady himself. It was all right sitting up here in this ugly building and initialing commitment papers, but actually to see one of those people and try to convince him of the need—
The door burst open.
A tall, dark-haired man in an open jacket came rushing through and paused dramatically just over the threshold. Immediately behind him came three unsmiling men in the gray silk-sheen uniforms of security. They carried drawn needlers.
"Are you Administrator Walton?" the big man asked, in an astonishingly deep, rich voice. "I have to see you. I'm Lyle Prior."
The three security men caught up and swarmed all over Prior. One of them turned apologetically to Walton. "We're terribly sorry about this, sir. He just broke away and ran. We can't understand how he got in here, but he did."
"Ah—yes. So I noticed," Walton remarked drily. "See if he's planning to assassinate anybody, will you?"
"Administrator Walton!" Prior protested. "I'm a man of peace! How can you accuse me of—"
One of the security men hit him. Walton stiffened and resisted the urge to reprimand the man. He was only doing his job, after all.
"Search him," Walton said.
They gave Prior an efficient going-over. "He's clean, Mr. Walton. Should we take him to security, or downstairs to health?"
"Neither. Leave him here with me."
"Are you sure you—"
"Get out of here," Walton snapped. As the three security men slinked away, he added, "And figure out some more efficient system for protecting me. Some day an assassin is going to sneak through here and get me. Not that I give a damn about myself, you understand; it's simply that I'm indispensable. There isn't another lunatic in the world who'd take this job. Now get out !"
They wasted no time in leaving. Walton waited until the door closed and jammed down hard on the lockstud. His tirade, he knew, was wholly unjustified; if he had remembered to lock his door as regulations prescribed, Prior would never have broken in. But he couldn't admit that to the guards.
"Take a seat, Mr. Prior."
"I have to thank you for granting me this audience," Prior said, without a hint of sarcasm in his booming voice. "I realize you're a terribly busy man."
"I am." Another three inches of paper had deposited itself on Walton's desk since Prior had entered. "You're very lucky to have hit the psychological moment for your entrance. At any other time I'd have had you brigged for a month, but just now I'm in need of a little diversion. Besides, I very much admire your work, Mr. Prior."
"Thank you." Again that humility, startling in so big and commanding a man. "I hadn't expected to find—I mean that you—"
"That a bureaucrat should admire poetry? Is that what you're groping for?"
Prior reddened. "Yes," he admitted.
Grinning, Walton said, "I have to do something when I go home at night. I don't really read Popeek reports twenty-four hours a day. No more than twenty; that's my rule. I thought your last book was quite remarkable."
"The critics didn't," Prior said diffidently.
"Critics! What do they know?" Walton demanded. "They swing in cycles. Ten years ago it was form and technique, and you got the Melling Prize. Now it's message, political content that counts. That's not poetry, Mr. Prior—and there are still a few of us who recognize what poetry is. Take Yeats, for instance—"
Walton was ready to launch into a discussion of every poet from Prior back to Surrey and Wyatt; anything to keep from the job at hand, anything to keep his mind from Popeek. But Prior interrupted him.
"Mr. Walton...."
"Yes?"
"My son Philip ... he's two weeks old now...."
Walton understood. "No, Prior. Please don't ask." Walton's skin felt cold; his hands, tightly clenched, were clammy.
"He was committed to Happysleep this morning—potentially tubercular. The boy's perfectly sound, Mr. Walton. Couldn't you—"
Walton rose. " No ," he said, half-commanding, half-pleading. "Don't ask me to do it. I can't make any exceptions, not even for you. You're an intelligent man; you understand our program."
"I voted for Popeek. I know all about Weeding the Garden and the Euthanasia Plan. But I hadn't expected—"
"You thought euthanasia was a fine thing for other people. So did everyone else," Walton said. "That's how the act was passed." Tenderly he said, "I can't do it. I can't spare your son. Our doctors give a baby every chance to live."
" I was tubercular. They cured me. What if they had practiced euthanasia a generation ago? Where would my poems be now?"
It was an unanswerable question; Walton tried to ignore it.
"Tuberculosis is an extremely rare disease, Mr. Prior. We can wipe it out completely if we strike at those with TB-susceptible genetic traits."
"Meaning you'll kill any children I have?" Prior asked.
"Those who inherit your condition," Walton said gently. "Go home, Mr. Prior. Burn me in effigy. Write a poem about me. But don't ask me to do the impossible. I can't catch any falling stars for you."
Prior rose. He was immense, a hulking tragic figure staring broodingly at Walton. For the first time since the poet's abrupt entry, Walton feared violence. His fingers groped for the needle gun he kept in his upper left desk drawer.
But Prior had no violence in him. "I'll leave you," he said somberly.
"I'm sorry, sir. Deeply sorry. For both of us."
Walton pressed the doorlock to let him out, then locked it again and slipped heavily into his chair. Three more reports slid out of the chute and landed on his desk. He stared at them as if they were three basilisks.
In the six weeks of Popeek's existence, three thousand babies had been ticketed for Happysleep, and three thousand sets of degenerate genes had been wiped from the race. Ten thousand subnormal males had been sterilized. Eight thousand dying oldsters had reached their graves ahead of time.
It was a tough-minded program. But why transmit palsy to unborn generations? Why let an adult idiot litter the world with subnormal progeny? Why force a man hopelessly cancerous to linger on in pain, consuming precious food?
Unpleasant? Sure. But the world had voted for it. Until Lang and his team succeeded in terraforming Venus, or until the faster-than-light outfit opened the stars to mankind, something had to be done about Earth's overpopulation. There were seven billion now and the figure was still growing.
Prior's words haunted him. I was tubercular ... where would my poems be now?
The big humble man was one of the great poets. Keats had been tubercular too.
What good are poets? he asked himself savagely.
The reply came swiftly: What good is anything, then? Keats, Shakespeare, Eliot, Yeats, Donne, Pound, Matthews ... and Prior. How much duller life would be without them, Walton thought, picturing his bookshelf—his one bookshelf, in his crowded little cubicle of a one-room home.
Sweat poured down his back as he groped toward his decision.
The step he was considering would disqualify him from his job if he admitted it, though he wouldn't do that. Under the Equalization Law, it would be a criminal act.
But just one baby wouldn't matter. Just one.
Prior's baby.
With nervous fingers he switched on the annunciator and said, "If there are any calls for me, take the message. I'll be out of my office for the next half-hour."
II
He stepped out of the office, glancing around furtively. The outer office was busy: half a dozen girls were answering calls, opening letters, coordinating activities. Walton slipped quickly past them into the hallway.
There was a knot of fear in his stomach as he turned toward the lift tube. Six weeks of pressure, six weeks of tension since Popeek was organized and old man FitzMaugham had tapped him for the second-in-command post ... and now, a rebellion. The sparing of a single child was a small rebellion, true, but he knew he was striking as effectively at the base of Popeek this way as if he had brought about repeal of the entire Equalization Law.
Well, just one lapse, he promised himself. I'll spare Prior's child, and after that I'll keep within the law.
He jabbed the lift tube indicator and the tube rose in its shaft. The clinic was on the twentieth floor.
"Roy."
At the sound of the quiet voice behind him, Walton jumped in surprise. He steadied himself, forcing himself to turn slowly. The director stood there.
"Good morning, Mr. FitzMaugham."
The old man was smiling serenely, his unlined face warm and friendly, his mop of white hair bright and full. "You look preoccupied, boy. Something the matter?"
Walton shook his head quickly. "Just a little tired, sir. There's been a lot of work lately."
As he said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. If anyone in Popeek worked harder than he did, it was the elderly director. FitzMaugham had striven for equalization legislature for fifty years, and now, at the age of eighty, he put in a sixteen-hour day at the task of saving mankind from itself.
The director smiled. "You never did learn how to budget your strength, Roy. You'll be a worn-out wreck before you're half my age. I'm glad you're adopting my habit of taking a coffee break in the morning, though. Mind if I join you?"
"I'm—not taking a break, sir. I have some work to do downstairs."
"Oh? Can't you take care of it by phone?"
"No, Mr. FitzMaugham." Walton felt as though he'd already been tried, drawn, and quartered. "It requires personal attention."
"I see." The deep, warm eyes bored into his. "You ought to slow down a little, I think."
"Yes, sir. As soon as the work eases up a little."
FitzMaugham chuckled. "In another century or two, you mean. I'm afraid you'll never learn how to relax, my boy."
The lift tube arrived. Walton stepped to one side, allowed the Director to enter, and got in himself. FitzMaugham pushed Fourteen ; there was a coffee shop down there. Hesitantly, Walton pushed twenty , covering the panel with his arm so the old man would be unable to see his destination.
As the tube began to descend, FitzMaugham said, "Did Mr. Prior come to see you this morning?"
"Yes," Walton said.
"He's the poet, isn't he? The one you say is so good?"
"That's right, sir," Walton said tightly.
"He came to see me first, but I had him referred down to you. What was on his mind?"
Walton hesitated. "He—he wanted his son spared from Happysleep. Naturally, I had to turn him down."
"Naturally," FitzMaugham agreed solemnly. "Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles."
"Of course, sir."
The lift tube halted and rocked on its suspension. The door slid back, revealing a neat, gleaming sign:
FLOOR 20 Euthanasia Clinic and Files
Walton had forgotten the accursed sign. He began to wish he had avoided traveling down with the director. He felt that his purpose must seem nakedly obvious now.
The old man's eyes were twinkling amusedly. "I guess you get off here," he said. "I hope you catch up with your work soon, Roy. You really should take some time off for relaxation each day."
"I'll try, sir."
Walton stepped out of the tube and returned FitzMaugham's smile as the door closed again. Bitter thoughts assailed him as soon as he was alone.
Some fine criminal you are. You've given the show away already! And damn that smooth paternal smile. FitzMaugham knows! He must know!
Walton wavered, then abruptly made his decision. He sucked in a deep breath and walked briskly toward the big room where the euthanasia files were kept.
The room was large, as rooms went nowadays—thirty by twenty, with deck upon deck of Donnerson micro-memory-tubes racked along one wall and a bank of microfilm records along the other. In six weeks of life Popeek had piled up an impressive collection of data.
While he stood there, the computer chattered, lights flashed. New facts poured into the memory banks. It probably went on day and night.
"Can I help—oh, it's you, Mr. Walton," a white-smocked technician said. Popeek employed a small army of technicians, each one faceless and without personality, but always ready to serve. "Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm simply running a routine checkup. Mind if I use the machine?"
"Not at all, sir. Go right ahead."
Walton grinned lightly and stepped forward. The technician practically backed out of his presence.
No doubt I must radiate charisma , he thought. Within the building he wore a sort of luminous halo, by virtue of being Director FitzMaugham's protégé and second-in-command. Outside, in the colder reality of the crowded metropolis, he kept his identity and Popeek rank quietly to himself.
Frowning, he tried to remember the Prior boy's name. Ah ... Philip, wasn't it? He punched out a request for the card on Philip Prior.
A moment's pause followed, while the millions of tiny cryotronic circuits raced with information pulses, searching the Donnerson tubes for Philip Prior's record. Then, a brief squeaking sound and a yellow-brown card dropped out of the slot:
3216847AB1
PRIOR, Philip Hugh. Born 31 May 2232, New York General Hospital, New York. First son of Prior, Lyle Martin and Prior, Ava Leonard. Wgt. at birth 5lb. 3oz.
An elaborate description of the boy in great detail followed, ending with blood type, agglutinating characteristic, and gene-pattern, codified. Walton skipped impatiently through that and came to the notification typed in curt, impersonal green capital letters at the bottom of the card:
EXAMINED AT N Y EUTH CLINIC 10 JUNE 2332 EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED
He glanced at his watch: the time was 1026. The boy was probably still somewhere in the clinic lab, waiting for the figurative axe to descend.
Walton had set up the schedule himself: the gas chamber delivered Happysleep each day at 1100 and 1500. He had about half an hour to save Philip Prior.
He peered covertly over his shoulder; no one was in sight. He slipped the baby's card into his breast pocket.
That done, he typed out a requisition for explanation of the gene-sorting code the clinic used. Symbols began pouring forth, and Walton puzzledly correlated them with the line of gibberish on Phillip Prior's record card. Finally he found the one he wanted: 3f2, tubercular-prone .
He scrapped the guide sheet he had and typed out a message to the machine. Revision of card number 3216847AB1 follows. Please alter in all circuits.
He proceeded to retype the child's card, omitting both the fatal symbol 3f2 and the notation recommending euthanasia from the new version. The machine beeped an acknowledgement. Walton smiled. So far, so good.
Then, he requested the boy's file all over again. After the customary pause, a card numbered 3216847AB1 dropped out of the slot. He read it.
The deletions had been made. As far as the machine was concerned, Philip Prior was a normal, healthy baby.
He glanced at his watch. 1037. Still twenty-three minutes before this morning's haul of unfortunates was put away.
Now came the real test: could he pry the baby away from the doctors without attracting too much attention to himself in the process?
Five doctors were bustling back and forth as Walton entered the main section of the clinic. There must have been a hundred babies there, each in a little pen of its own, and the doctors were humming from one to the next, while anxious parents watched from screens above.
The Equalization Law provided that every child be presented at its local clinic within two weeks of birth, for an examination and a certificate. Perhaps one in ten thousand would be denied a certificate ... and life.
"Hello, Mr. Walton. What brings you down here?"
Walton smiled affably. "Just a routine investigation, Doctor. I try to keep in touch with every department we have, you know."
"Mr. FitzMaugham was down here to look around a little while ago. We're really getting a going-over today, Mr. Walton!"
"Umm. Yes." Walton didn't like that, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'd have to rely on the old man's abiding faith in his protégé to pull him out of any possible stickiness that arose.
"Seen my brother around?" he asked.
"Fred? He's working in room seven, running analyses. Want me to get him for you, Mr. Walton?"
"No—no, don't bother him, thanks. I'll find him later." Inwardly, Walton felt relieved. Fred Walton, his younger brother, was a doctor in the employ of Popeek. Little love was lost between the brothers, and Roy did not care to have Fred know he was down there.
Strolling casually through the clinic, he peered at a few plump, squalling babies, and said, "Find many sour ones today?"
"Seven so far. They're scheduled for the 1100 chamber. Three tuberc, two blind, one congenital syph."
"That only makes six," Walton said.
"Oh, and a spastic," the doctor said. "Biggest haul we've had yet. Seven in one morning."
"Have any trouble with the parents?"
"What do you think?" the doctor asked. "But some of them seemed to understand. One of the tuberculars nearly raised the roof, though."
Walton shuddered. "You remember his name?" he asked, with feigned calm.
Silence for a moment. "No. Darned if I can think of it. I can look it up for you if you like."
"Don't bother," Walton said hurriedly.
He moved on, down the winding corridor that led to the execution chamber. Falbrough, the executioner, was studying a list of names at his desk when Walton appeared.
Falbrough didn't look like the sort of man who would enjoy his work. He was short and plump, with a high-domed bald head and glittering contact lenses in his weak blue eyes. "Morning, Mr. Walton."
"Good morning, Doctor Falbrough. You'll be operating soon, won't you?"
"Eleven hundred, as usual."
"Good. There's a new regulation in effect from now on," Walton said.
"To keep public opinion on our side."
"Sir?"
"Henceforth, until further notice, you're to check each baby that comes to you against the main file, just to make sure there's been no mistake. Got that?"
" Mistake? But how—"
"Never mind that, Falbrough. There was quite a tragic slip-up at one of the European centers yesterday. We may all hang for it if news gets out." How glibly I reel this stuff off , Walton thought in amazement.
Falbrough looked grave. "I see, sir. Of course. We'll double-check everything from now on."
"Good. Begin with the 1100 batch."
Walton couldn't bear to remain down in the clinic any longer. He left via a side exit, and signaled for a lift tube.
Minutes later he was back in his office, behind the security of a towering stack of work. His pulse was racing; his throat was dry. He remembered what FitzMaugham had said: Once we make even one exception, the whole framework crumbles.
Well, the framework had begun crumbling, then. And there was little doubt in Walton's mind that FitzMaugham knew or would soon know what he had done. He would have to cover his traces, somehow.
The annunciator chimed and said, "Dr. Falbrough of Happysleep calling you, sir."
"Put him on."
The screen lit and Falbrough's face appeared; its normal blandness had given way to wild-eyed tenseness.
"What is it, Doctor?"
"It's a good thing you issued that order when you did, sir! You'll never guess what just happened—"
"No guessing games, Falbrough. Speak up."
"I—well, sir, I ran checks on the seven babies they sent me this morning. And guess—I mean—well, one of them shouldn't have been sent to me!"
"No!"
"It's the truth, sir. A cute little baby indeed. I've got his card right here. The boy's name is Philip Prior, and his gene-pattern is fine."
"Any recommendation for euthanasia on the card?" Walton asked.
"No, sir."
Walton chewed at a ragged cuticle for a moment, counterfeiting great anxiety. "Falbrough, we're going to have to keep this very quiet. Someone slipped up in the examining room, and if word gets out that there's been as much as one mistake, we'll have a mob swarming over us in half an hour."
"Yes, sir." Falbrough looked terribly grave. "What should I do, sir?"
"Don't say a word about this to anyone , not even the men in the examining room. Fill out a certificate for the boy, find his parents, apologize and return him to them. And make sure you keep checking for any future cases of this sort."
"Certainly, sir. Is that all?"
"It is," Walton said crisply, and broke the contact. He took a deep breath and stared bleakly at the far wall.
The Prior boy was safe. And in the eyes of the law—the Equalization Law—Roy Walton was now a criminal. He was every bit as much a criminal as the man who tried to hide his dying father from the investigators, or the anxious parents who attempted to bribe an examining doctor.
He felt curiously dirty. And, now that he had betrayed FitzMaugham and the Cause, now that it was done, he had little idea why he had done it, why he had jeopardized the Popeek program, his position—his life, even—for the sake of one potentially tubercular baby.
Well, the thing was done.
No. Not quite. Later, when things had quieted down, he would have to finish the job by transferring all the men in the clinic to distant places and by obliterating the computer's memories of this morning's activities.
The annunciator chimed again. "Your brother is on the wire, sir."
Walton trembled imperceptibly as he said, "Put him on." Somehow, Fred never called unless he could say or do something unpleasant. And Walton was very much afraid that his brother meant no good by this call. No good at all.
III
Roy Walton watched his brother's head and shoulders take form out of the swirl of colors on the screen. Fred Walton was more compact, built closer to the ground than his rangy brother; he was a squat five-seven, next to Roy's lean six-two. Fred had always threatened to "get even" with his older brother as soon as they were the same size, but to Fred's great dismay he had never managed to catch up with Roy in height.
Even on the screen, Fred's neck and shoulders gave an impression of tremendous solidity and force. Walton waited for his brother's image to take shape, and when the time lag was over he said, "Well, Fred? What goes?"
His brother's eyes flickered sleepily. "They tell me you were down here a little while ago, Roy. How come I didn't rate a visit?"
"I wasn't in your section. It was official business, anyway. I didn't have time."
Walton fixed his eyes sharply on the caduceus emblem gleaming on Fred's lapel, and refused to look anywhere else.
Fred said slowly, "You had time to tinker with our computer, though."
"Official business!"
"Really, Roy?" His brother's tone was venomous. "I happened to be using the computer shortly after you this morning. I was curious—unpardonably so, dear brother. I requested a transcript of your conversation with the machine."
Sparks seemed to flow from the screen. Walton sat back, feeling numb. He managed to pull his sagging mouth back into a stiff hard line and say, "That's a criminal offense, Fred. Any use I make of a Popeek computer outlet is confidential."
"Criminal offence? Maybe so ... but that makes two of us, then. Eh, Roy?"
"How much do you know?"
"You wouldn't want me to recite it over a public communications system, would you? Your friend FitzMaugham might be listening to every word of this, and I have too much fraternal feeling for that. Ole Doc Walton doesn't want to get his bigwig big brother in trouble—oh, no!"
"Thanks for small blessings," Roy said acidly.
"You got me this job. You can take it away. Let's call it even for now, shall we?"
"Anything you like," Walton said. He was drenched in sweat, though the ingenious executive filter in the sending apparatus of the screen cloaked that fact and presented him as neat and fresh. "I have some work to do now." His voice was barely audible.
"I won't keep you any longer, then," Fred said.
The screen went dead.
Walton killed the contact at his end, got up, walked to the window. He nudged the opaquer control and the frosty white haze over the glass cleared away, revealing the fantastic beehive of the city outside.
Idiot! he thought. Fool!
He had risked everything to save one baby, one child probably doomed to an early death anyway. And FitzMaugham knew—the old man could see through Walton with ease—and Fred knew, too. His brother, and his father-substitute.
FitzMaugham might well choose to conceal Roy's defection this time, but would surely place less trust in him in the future. And as for Fred....
There was no telling what Fred might do. They had never been particularly close as brothers; they had lived with their parents (now almost totally forgotten) until Roy was nine and Fred seven. Their parents had gone down off Maracaibo in a jet crash; Roy and Fred had been sent to the public crèche.
After that it had been separate paths for the brothers. For Roy, an education in the law, a short spell as Senator FitzMaugham's private secretary, followed last month by his sudden elevation to assistant administrator of the newly-created Popeek Bureau. For Fred, medicine, unsuccessful private practice, finally a job in the Happysleep section of Popeek, thanks to Roy.
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Who or what is the Lorelei?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lorelei Death by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
Question:
Who or what is the Lorelei?
Answer:
|
[
"The Lorelei was first an ancient myth that plagued all spacemen. It was a Teutonic myth, similar to the sirens of ancient Greece, about a gorgeous blonde woman who combed her hair and sang to those around her. Her position on the rock lured all the men to their doom, as they would crash around her. That is where the Lorelei originated. In this turn of events, the story has evolved into a present-day pirating crew using the original myth to draw spacemen in. For the past two months, according to Space Patrolman Johnny Haldane, a pirate crew has a beautiful blonde woman calling for help to lure at least a dozen spaceships in before they kill the crew and capture all of their cargo. The pirates then turn on all of the control locks and send the empty ships back out, as they have no space for them in their current base. The Lorelei and her crew intercepted Chip’s message about the ekalastron and set their sights on his ship as their next target. ",
"The Lorelei is what Chip refers to as a myth, which his friend Johnny insists is true. According to the original stories, there was a woman who sat on a rock in the middle of a sea distracting people who went by, like the classic siren myths. Johnny had been tracking some of the related crewmen and was investigating a lead when he ran into Chip. Johnny explained the two months of destruction that had occured, including the testimony of the one survivor found in the wreckage of a ship. This myth was being tied to a lot of pirating in the area, with particularly powerful ships. This is why Johnny didn't dare try to attack the Lorelei until he learned the Chip's ship had special plating on it that could protect them. In some sense, the Lorelei is both a myth and also a symbol representing a specific cluster of pirating. ",
"In literature, the Lorelei is an old Teutonic myth about a beautiful woman on a rock in the middle of the sea. She sings and uses her beauty to lure sailors to her where their ships are then destroyed on the rock. In the story, the Lorelei is a trap created by a group of pirates. They manage to fill spaceships’ perilenses with the image of a beautiful young woman with a “come hither” look about her, motioning for the ship to approach her. Her voice is projected through the ships’ audio systems, and she entreats the space sailors to come to her aid. In the past two months, a dozen ships have fallen prey to the trap; the crews were murdered, the cargo stolen, and the empty vessels set adrift back into space. On one ship, however, a cabin boy avoided detection and lived to describe the Lorelei’s appearance and the attack. When the Lorelei image appears in the Chickadee’s perilens, Chip changes to a different frequency, but her image is on all of them; thus, the ship is flying blindly through space. This makes the Chickadee an easy target for the pirates to hit with their tractor-blast and take over. For Chip, though, the pirates know about his discovery of ek, so in addition to taking his cargo, they want to know the location of the remaining ek and plan to beat him until he gives them the information they want.",
"According to Chip, Lorelei is an old Teutonic myth about a beautiful, golden-haired damsel who sits on a rock in the middle of the sea, drawing in admirers to their ultimate doom. However, his space-cop friend Johnny informs Chip that the myth of Lorelei is very real, but instead of the middle of the sea, she makes her perch on an unknown asteroid in the middle of the Belt where she lures space-mariners to their death. Since she and her crew of pirates began attacking from the Belt, they have destroyed a dozen freighters, liners, and Patrolships, murdered their crew and stolen their cargo. Because she has no room on her hideout for ravaged ships, she locks the controls and sends them back into space as a kind of calling card. Johnny warns Chip that Lorelei and her crew will likely be waiting to ambush the Chickadee II as it passes through the Belt, and that is why they plan to join forces against her. However, one of Lorelei's men kills Johnny before they can, leading Chip to chase him down. During the chase, Lorelei appears on the Chickadee's perilens and entrances the men."
] |
62039
|
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
|
What is ekalastron or No. 97?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lorelei Death by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
Question:
What is ekalastron or No. 97?
Answer:
|
[
"Ekalastron is the element No. 97 on the period table. It is an incredibly valuable material due to its properties. It’s an incredibly light metal, and yet it is also impenetrable. Johnny claims that it’s strong enough that a simple film of ekalastron would deflect an entire meteor. Of course, because of this, any amount of ekalastron could make a person very wealthy. Chip and his crew find an entire mountain of ekalastron on the chilly Titania, a satellite off of Uranus. They decided to turn over their find to the Uranus Space Patrol, and then let the Earth authorities know that they were bringing in some cargo. ",
"Ekalastron is a recently discovered element that takes up No. 97 on the periodic table. It is an extremely light metal that is also very strong and resiliant, so it could be worth a lot of money to the right people. Chip and his crew had found a mountain of it, which they had collected and begun to use to plate their ship to protect it from attack. The pirates who capture Chip at the end had intercepted Chip's message to Earth about the delivery of the shipment, but it seemed what they were really after was information on the location where Chip had mined this resource. This was worth far more, which made Chip realize he still had an advantage in the discussions.\n",
"Ekalastron (ek) is a recently discovered new element; on the periodic table, it is No. 97. Ek is extremely valuable due to its characteristics. It is such a lightweight metal that a man can carry enough in one hand to coat the entire hull of a battleship. Yet even the slightest layer of ek is strong enough to deflect a meteor. It is strong enough to crush the hardest materials but at the same time so resilient that it can rebound like rubber. A ship coated in ek will be invincible, so the element is highly desired by both government agencies and criminals alike. Chip’s men have a cargo of it, and all three will be rich for the rest of their lives.\n\tThe element has far-reaching implications for whoever has it; in the wrong hands, it will enable criminals like space pirates to attack and plunder with impunity. In the hands of the government and the Space Patrol, ek will ensure the safety of public officers and officials, guaranteeing that criminal elements will never be able to damage their ships. It also ensures tremendous wealth for whoever owns it. The ek shows the true character of Chip, Syd, and Salvation; while they take enough for their own wants and needs, they turn over the balance to the Space Patrol of Uranus, providing that organization with the opportunity to benefit from it and preventing it from falling into the wrong hands. They also notify Earth that they are bringing a cargo of ek, presumably to arrange a private sale to the government or law enforcement, again keeping the valuable mineral out of the hands of those who would use it for unlawful gain.\n",
"Ekalastron, colloquially referred to as \"ek\", is a light, but extremely durable metal discovered in vast quantities in the fiery mines of Uranus' moon Titania by Chip Warren and the crew of the Chickadee II. The metal is so strong that even a small sliver of it is sufficient to deflect a meteor striking a ship. It can easily crush diamonds into ash. For all of these reasons, ekalastron is a highly sought-after and valuable element (Number 97 on the periodic table). After discovering a mountain of ekalastron within the mines of Titania, Chip and his crew turns the reserves over to Space Patrol authorities on Uranus and begin the journey back to Earth, where they plan to deliver their ship's cargo of the element. To protect themselves on the journey, they stop at a spaceport on Donae where a jerry-crew begins covering the ship with a thin coat of ekalastron. Johnny Haldane offers to deputize Chip as a member of Space Patrol when he realizes his ship has this level of protection, so that Chip may help him in his pursuit of Lorelei and her band of pirates. Johnny warns Chip that her crew may have already intercepted his transmission to Earth revealing the cargo he is carrying, and they might be lying in wait to ambush Chip on his way back home; therefore, the two have a shared interest in working together. After Chip is captured by Lorelei's men, they demand to know where the rest of the ekalastron stores are."
] |
62039
|
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
|
Who is Salvation Smith, and what is his significance in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lorelei Death by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
Question:
Who is Salvation Smith, and what is his significance in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Salvation Smith is a highly-religious man and a missionary. However, his god is not a gentle one. Salvation Smith is a scarecrow of a man, tall and lean, who dresses in all black with wavy gray hair. He believed in spreading the word of Yahveh of the Old Testament and took his words to heart. Salvation did not turn away from evil, in fact, he was one of the best shooters in space. Salvation Smith stays behind with Syd Palmer at the beginning of the story, after wisely warning Chip to be careful during his night on the town. Chip and Syd both respect Salvation for his knowledge, faith, and strength, so he is usually listened to. \nIn the end, Salvation helps Chip escape from the authorities and men wrongfully pursuing him and tries to save them from destruction when they encounter the Lorelei. However, the story ends without a complete resolution for Salvation. The readers are unsure if he survived the crash, or if he’d been taken hostage by the pirates. Salvation Smith is often a voice of reason, as well as a great companion throughout the story. \n",
"Salvation Smith is the father of Chip Warren. He is a tall thin man on the older side, with silver hair and a bit of a sickly look to him. His role in the story is that of a missionary; although not affiliated with any church in particular, he is determined to tell the story of his own faith and has enough motivation to do so independently, as part of an adventure. \"his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution\" His reputation was two-fold: extreme religiousness but also excellent at handling a weapon. ",
"Salvation Smith is an older gentleman on the Chickadee II crew. He is a tall, rangy man, hawkeyed and gray-haired, with weathered cheeks, who wears black. He is devoutly religious although he is not affiliated with any church. He often integrates Biblical scriptures and analogies in his speech. With the heart of an explorer, Smith has given himself the mission of taking the message of the God he worships to the places they travel in space. Smith doesn’t focus on the merciful, loving New Testament nature of God but rather the Old Testament nature of God as angry and vengeful. In addition, Smith is an excellent marksman and mans the gunnery turret of the Chickadee. Although he works with Chip and Syd, he is also their friend. Smith warns Chip to be careful when he goes out for a drink on Danae, and when Chip returns in a panic to leave immediately, Smith remains calm and supportive. Recognizing trouble is ahead, he immediately prepares the weapon in the gunnery turret for use. \n Smith is also a wise advisor; when Syd says they should turn the whole matter of chasing the pirate/assailant to the Space Patrol, Smith is the one who points out that they can’t port anywhere until they can clear Chip because Chip is wanted for the murder of Haldane. The circumstantial evidence against Chip is strong, and 20 witnesses saw him standing over the dead body with a weapon drawn. Furthermore, the bartender heard Haldane “accuse” Chip of murder. When the assailant leads them deeper into space than Chip has ever gone, he asks Smith where he thinks they are headed, and Smith predicts it’s the Bog where asteroids are prevalent and difficult to avoid. \n",
"Salvation Smith is a tall, gangly missionary with a lean jaw, long, silver hair, weathered cheeks, and the heart of an adventurer. He is one of the crew members of the Chickadee. Although he is prone to quoting scripture and warning his crewmates of the violence and iniquities of the planetoids they visit, Salvation is not officially ordained through the church. However, his devout religious beliefs compel him to bring the story of his God to outland tribes. The God he worships is \"the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament,\" and Salvation sometimes resorts to strong-arm methods in bringing converts to his faith; he is quite gifted with a gun. Because of their affection for him, Chip and Syd call him \"Padre.\" When Chip returns to the ship to chase down Lorelei's goon who had killed Johnny, Salvation mans the gunnery turret and prepares for battle. When Syd wants to abandon the effort to catch the goon, Salvation stands with Chip, reminding Syd that authorities believe Chip was responsible for Johnny's death. When the goon takes advantage of the distraction employed by Lorelei, Salvation lets loose with the gunfire, shooting at an invisible target."
] |
62039
|
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
|
Who is Johnny Haldane and what happens to him throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Lorelei Death by Nelson S. Bond.
Relevant chunks:
THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
Question:
Who is Johnny Haldane and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Johnny Haldane is a member of the Space Patrol and one of Chip’s old friends. They talk briefly about their previous adventures and running into each other all across space, which speaks highly of their close bond. He arrives on Dandae to track one of the Lorelei’s crew, hoping to follow him all the way back to their hideout. However, while there, he runs into Chip and makes a grand entrance, accusing him of murder. This causes the bartender to scurry away, so they sit and talk in private while nursing a bottle of scotch. After chatting for a bit, Chip reveals to Johnny that his crew found a mountain of ekalastron and they gave it back to the Space Patrol, as private users might have abused the material. All is well and good until Johnny hears that Chip used his visiphone to get in touch with Earth authorities, which Johnny immediately protests. Evidently, the Lorelei tracks people through visiphone messages and could have intercepted his. They decide to take on the Lorelei together, tracking the crew member back to their base and using Chip’s newly-plated ship for protection. However, before they can move, a man comes in with a scar on his face and shoots at the two of them. Johnny saves Chip’s life by pushing him out of the way but is killed by the blast. ",
"Johnny Haldane is a type of space-cop who is following a lead about the Lorelei, which has brought him to the asteroid Danae in an attempt to intercept a supply run. He is friends with Chip, though they have not seen each other in some time. However, they have a friendly rapport, as he was the one who burst into the bar at the beginning of the story, accusing Chip of murder and calling for his arrest as a way to get his attention. He explains everything he knows about the recent attacks that the Loreli has been accused of recently, and they two of them decide to pursue the case together in Chip's fancy newly-protected ship before Johnny dies in a skirmish at the bar by the hand of a man with a scar on his face. Besides the information about the Lorelei, the other lasting impact he has on his story is his false accusation of Chip when he greets him: because everyone else took this seriously, it means Chip is being chased and accused of murder for the duration of the story. \n",
"Johnny Haldane is a member of the Space Patrol and an old friend of Chip Warren. He is a strong, brave man with a sense of humor. He startles Chip by bursting into the bar and jokingly yelling for someone to grab Chip because he’s wanted for murder. Haldane is impressed to learn that Chip is plating his cruiser with ekalastron and learning of his cargo, asks if Chip will sell it on the open market. When Chip explains they turned the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus and visiphoned Earth about their cargo, Haldane informs Chip that he might be in serious danger from the Lorelei. At first, Chip thinks Haldane is talking about the myth, but Haldane explains about the Lorelei image luring ships that are then taken by pirates. The pirates take the cargo and murder everyone on board. Since it started two months ago, the sting has captured a dozen ships. Haldane urges Chip to change his plans and go to Jupiter or Io instead of Earth. But when Chip reminds him his ship is being plated with ekalastron, Haldane offers to deputize Chip to go after the Lorelei together. Haldane explains that one of the Lorelei’s men is on the asteroid now picking up supplies; Haldane is trying to find him so he can follow him back to his base. Suddenly, Haldane thrusts Chip aside, and a flame shot smashes Chip’s drink bottle on the bar. Another shot is fired into Haldane’s face, killing him.\n\tLater, though, Chip’s memories of Haldane help him. He remembers Haldane’s strategy of plotting his prey’s course, and when he is sure of the destination, taking care of him. Chip applies this strategy to the assailant he is chasing, rather than racing up and overtaking him. He wants to find the Lorelei and destroy it to protect everyone in space, in addition to capturing the assailant who can clear his name. It is also Haldane’s warning of the Lorelei that enables Chip to respond without being drawn in by her beckoning. He knows the fate that awaits them if they approach her and immediately takes action that he hopes will prevent them from falling into the pirates’ clutches.\n",
"Johnny is a space cop with Space Patrol and an old friend of Chip Warren. He speaks with a deep voice, has a powerful handshake, and dresses in the blue uniform of Space Patrol. Johnny is in the casino when he sees Chip walking to the private bar, so he follows him there so the two can catch up. When Johnny enters the bar, he jokes that Chip is a murderer wanted on four planets, a joke the Martian bartender takes to heart after Johnny's death. When Chip and Johnny reunite, Johnny is impressed by Chip's discovery of ekalastron, and even more excited later when Chip offers to use his ek-coated ship to pursue Lorelei and her crew. Johnny comes to Donae in pursuit of one of Lorelei's men after receiving a tip about him traveling there on a supply run. After Johnny provides Chip with information about the truth of Lorelei's existence as well as her violent recent history in space, the two strike up the aforementioned plan to join forces and bring Lorelei to justice. No sooner is this plan hatched, than an unknown assailant--presumably Lorelei's crew member Johnny had been pursuing--begins shooting at the two men in the bar. Johnny sustains a blast to the face and immediately dies. Because of the joke Johnny had told earlier about Chip being a murderer, the Martian bartender believes Chip has killed Johnny. Angered and shaken, Chip pursues Johnny's killer with a horde of men close on heels who believe Chip is the actual killer."
] |
62039
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THE LORELEI DEATH
by NELSON S. BOND
Far out in limitless Space she plied her deadly trade ... a Lorelei of the void, beckoning spacemen to death and destruction with her beautiful siren lure.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Chip Warren stood before an oblong of glass set into one wall of the spaceship Chickadee II , stared at what he saw reflected therefrom—and frowned. He didn't like it. Not a bit! It was too—too—
He turned away angrily, ripped the offending article from about his neck, and chose another necktie from the rack. This one was brighter, gaudier, much more in keeping with the gaiety of his mood. He emitted a grunt of satisfaction, spun from the mirror to face his two companions triumphantly.
"There! How do you like that ?"
Syd Palmer, short and chubby, tow-headed and liquid-blue of eye, always languid save when engaged in the solution of some engineering problem concerned with the space vessel he mothered like a brooding hen, moaned insultingly and forced a shudder.
"Sunspots! Novae! Flying comets! And he wears 'em around his neck!"
"You," Chip told him serenely, "have no appreciation of beauty. What do you think of it, Padre?"
"Salvation" Smith, a tall, gangling scarecrow garbed in rusty black, a lean-jawed, hawkeyed man with tumbled locks of silver framing his weathered cheeks like a halo, concealed his grin poorly. "Well, my boy," he admitted, "there is some Biblical precedent for your—ahem!—clamorous raiment. 'So Joseph made for himself a coat which was of many colors—'"
"Both of you," declared Chip, "give me a pain in the pants! Stick-in-the-muds! Here we are in port for the first time in months, cargo-bins loaded to the gunwales with enough ekalastron to make us rich for life—and you sit here like a pair of stuffed owls!
"Well, not me! I'm going to take a night off, throw myself a party the likes of which was never seen around these parts. Put a candle in the window, chilluns, 'cause li'l' Chip won't be home till the wee, sma' hours!"
Syd chuckled.
"O.Q., big shot. But don't get too cozy with any of those joy-joint entertainers. Remember what happened to poor old Dougal MacNeer!"
Salvation said soberly, "Syd's just fooling, my boy. But I would be careful if I were you. We're in the Belt, you know. The forces of law and order do not always govern these wild outposts of civilization as well as might be hoped. The planetoids are dens of iniquity, violent and unheeding the words of Him who rules all—"
The old man's lips etched a straight line, reminding Chip that Salvation Smith was not one of those milk-and-water missionaries who espoused the principle of "turning the other cheek" to evildoers. Salvation was not the ordained emissary of any church. A devoutly religious man with the heart of an adventurer, he had taken upon himself the mission of carrying to outland tribes the story of the God he worshipped.
That his God was the fierce Yahveh of the Old Testament, a God of anger and retribution, was made evident by the methods Salvation sometimes employed in winning his converts. For not only was Salvation acknowledged the most pious man in space; he was also conceded to be the best hand with a gun!
Now Chip gave quiet answer. "I know, Padre: I'll be careful. Well, Syd—sure you won't change your mind and come along?"
"No can do, chum. The spaceport repair crew's still smearing this jalopy with ek. Got to stay and watch 'em."
"O.Q. I'm off alone, then. See you later!"
And, whistling, Chip Warren stepped through the lock of the Chickadee onto the soil of the asteroid Danae.
Danae was, thought Chip as he strolled along briskly toward the town beyond the spaceport, a most presentable hunk of rock. Nice lucentite Dome ... good atmo ... a fine artificial grav system based on Terra normal. It seemed to be a popular little fueling-stop, too, for its cradle-bins were laden with vessels from every planet in the System, and as he gained the main drag he found himself rubbing shoulders with citizens of every known world. Lumbering, albino Venusians, petal-headed Martians, Jovian runts, greenies from far Uranus, Earthman—all were here.
Quite a likely place, he thought happily, to chuck a brawl. A brilliantly gleaming xenon sign before him welcomed visitors to:
XU'UL'S SOLAREST Barroom—Casino—Dancing 100—Lovely Hostesses—100
He entered, and was immediately deluged by a bevy of charm-gals vying for the privilege of: (1) helping him beat the roulette wheel; (2) helping him drink the house dry, and/or (3) separating him as swiftly as possible from the credits in his money belt.
Chip shook them off, gently but firmly. He wanted a good time, true; but he wanted it solo. The main cabaret was too crowded; he passed through it and another equally blatant room wherein twoscore Venusians were straining the structure with a native "sing-stomp," and ended up finally, with a sigh of relief, in a small, dimly-lighted private bar unfrequented by anyone save a bored and listless Martian bartender.
The chrysanthemum-pated son of the desertland roused himself as Chip entered, rustled his petals and piped a ready greeting.
"Welcoom, ssirr! Trrink, pleasse?"
This was more like it! Chip grinned.
"Scotch," he said. " Old Spaceman. And let's have a new bottle, Curly. None of that doctored swill."
"Of courrsse, ssirr!" piped the bar-keep aggrievedly. He pushed a bottle across the mahogany; Chip flipped a golden credit-token back at him.
"Tell me when I've guzzled this, and I'll start work on another." He took a deep, appreciative sniff. "And don't let any of those dizzy dolls in here," he ordered. "I've got a lot of back drinking to catch up on, and I don't want to be disturbed— Hey! "
In his alarm, he almost dropped the bottle. For the door suddenly burst open, and in its frame loomed a figure in Space Patrol blues. A finger pointed in Chip's direction and a bull-o'-Bashan voice roared:
" Stop! Bartender—grab that man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder!"
Shock momentarily immobilized Chip. Not so the bartender. He was, it seemed, an ardent pacifist. With a bleat of panic fear he scampered from his post, his metallic stilts clattering off in the distance. Chip's accuser moved forward from the shadows; dim light illumined his features. And—
" Johnny! " Chip's voice lifted in a note of jubilant surprise.
"Johnny Haldane—you old scoundrel! Where in the void did you drop from?"
The S.S.P. man chuckled and returned Chip's greeting with a bone-grinding handclasp.
"I might ask the same of you, chum! Lord, it's been ages since we've crossed 'jectory! When I saw you meandering across the Casino, you could have knocked me down with a jetblast! What's new? Is old Syd still with you?"
"We're still shipmates. But he's back at the spaceport. The jerry-crew is plating our crate with ek, and—"
"Ek! Plating a private cruiser!" Haldane stared at him in astonishment, then whistled. "Sweet Sacred Stars, you must be filthy with credits to be able to coat an entire ship with ekalastron!"
"You," boasted Chip, "ain't heard nothing yet!" And he told him how they had discovered an entire mountain of the previous new element, No.
97 in the periodic table, on frigid Titania, satellite of far Uranus.
"It was touch-and-go for a while," he admitted, "whether we'd be the luckiest three guys in space—or the deadest! But we passed through the flaming caverns like old Shadrach in the Bible—remember?—and here we are!"
[1]
Haldane was exuberant. "A mountain of ekalastron!" he gloated.
"That's the greatest contribution to spaceflight since Biggs' velocity-intensifier!" It was no overstatement. "Element No. 97 was a metal so light that a man could carry in one hand enough to coat the entire hull of a battleship—yet so adamant that a gossamer film of it would deflect a meteor! A metal strong enough to crush diamonds to ash—but so resilient that, when properly treated, it would rebound like rubber! What are you going to do with it, Chip? Put it on the open market?"
Warren shook his head.
"Not exactly. We talked it over carefully—Syd and Salvation and I—and we decided there are some space-rats to whom it shouldn't be made available. Privateers and outlaws, you know. So we turned control of the mines over to the Space Patrol at Uranus, and visiphoned the Earth authorities we were bringing in one cargo—"
"Visiphoned!" interrupted Haldane sharply. "Did you say visiphoned?"
"Why—why, yes."
"From where?"
"Oh, just before we reached the Belt. We don't have a very strong transmitter, you know. Sa-a-ay, what's all the excitement, pal? Did we do something that was wrong?"
Haldane frowned worriedly. "I don't know, Chip. It wasn't anything wrong , but what you did was damned dangerous. For if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the very hands of—the Lorelei!"
Chip stared at his friend bewilderedly for a moment. Then he grinned.
"Hey—I must be getting slightly whacky in my old age. I stand here with an unopened bottle in my hands and hear things! For a minute I thought you said 'Lorelei.' The Lorelei, my space-cop friend, is a myth. An old Teutonic myth about a beautiful damsel who sits out in the middle of a sea on a treacherous rock, combing her golden locks, warbling and luring her fascinated admirers to destruction."
He grunted. "A dirty trick, if you ask me. Catch a snort of this alleged Scotch, pal, and I'll torture your eardrums with the whole, sad story." He started to sing. "' Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten —'"
The Patrolman laid a hand on his arm, silenced him.
"It's not funny, Chip. You've described the Lorelei exactly. That's how she got her name. An incredibly beautiful woman who wantonly lures space-mariners to their death.
"The only difference is that her 'rock' is an asteroid somewhere in the Belt—and she does not sing, she calls! She began exercising her vicious appeal about two months ago, Earth reckoning. Since then, no less than a dozen spacecraft—freighters, liners, even one Patrolship—have fallen prey to her wiles. Their crews have been brutally murdered, their cargos stolen."
"Wait a minute!" interrupted Chip shrewdly. "How do you know about her if the crews have been murdered?"
"She has a habit of locking the controls," explained Haldane, "and setting ravaged ships adrift. Apparently there is no room on her hideout—wherever it is—for empty hulks. One of these ships was salvaged by a courageous cabin-boy who hid from the Lorelei and her pirate band beneath a closetful of soiled linens in the laundry. He described her. His description goes perfectly with less accurate glimpses seen over the visiphones of several score spacecraft!"
Chip said soberly, "So it's no joke, eh, pal? Sorry I popped off. I thought you were pulling my leg. Where do I come into this mess, though?"
"Ekalastron!" grunted Johnny succinctly. "A jackpot prize for any corsair! And you advertised a cargo of it over the etherwaves! The Lorelei will be waiting for you with her tongue hanging out. The only thing for you to do, kid, is go back to Jupiter or Io as fast as you can get there. Make the Patrol give you a convoy—"
A sudden light danced in Chip Warren's eyes. It was a light Syd Palmer would have groaned to see—for it usually presaged trouble. It was a bright, hard, reckless light.
"Hold your jets, Johnny!" drawled Chip. "Aren't you forgetting one thing? In a couple more hours, I can face the Lorelei and her whole mob—and be damned to them! She can't touch the Chickadee , because it's being plated right now!"
Haldane snapped his fingers in quick remembrance.
"By thunder, you're right! Her shells will ricochet off the Chickadee's hull like hail off a tin roof. Chip, are you in any hurry to reach Earth? I thought not. What do you say we go after the Lorelei together ! I'll swear you in as a Deputy Patrolman; we'll take the Chickadee and—"
"It's a deal!" declared Chip promptly. "You got any idea where this Lorelei's hangout is?"
"That's why I'm here on Danae. I got a tip that one of the Lorelei's men put in here for supplies. I hoped maybe I could single him out somehow, follow him when he jetted for his base, and in that way— Chip! Look out! "
Haldane shouted and moved at the same time. His arm lashed out wildly, thrusting, smashing Chip to the floor in a sprawling heap. The as-yet unopened bottle was now violently opened; it splintered into a thousand shards against a wall.
Bruised and shaken, Chip lifted his head to see what had caused Johnny's alarm. Even as he did so, the dull gloom of the bar was blazoned with searing effulgence. A lancet of flame leaped from the dark, rearward doorway, burst in Johnny Haldane's face!
The Patrolman cried once, a choking cry that died in a mewling whimper. His unused pistol slipped from slackening fingers, and he sagged to the floor. Again crimson lightning laced the shadows; Haldane's body jerked, and the air was raw with the hot, sickening stench of charred flesh.
With an instinct born of bitter years, Chip had come to his knees behind the shelter of the mahogany bar. But now his own flame-pistol was in his hand, and a dreadful rage was mingled with the agony in his heart. Reckless of results, he sprang to his feet, gun spewing livid death into the shadows.
His blast found a mark. For an instant flame haloed a human face drawn in inhuman pain. A heavy, sultry, bestial face, already puckered with one long, ugly scar that ran from right temple to jawbone, now newly scarred with the red brand of Chip's marksmanship.
Then, before Chip could fire again, came the rasp of pounding footsteps. The man turned and fled. Chip bent over his fallen friend, seeking, with hands that did not even feel the heat, fluttering life beneath still smoldering cloth.
He felt—nothing. Johnny was dead.
A snarl of sheer animal rage burst from Chip's lips. Someone would pay for this; pay dearly! Help was coming now. He himself would lead the hue-and-cry that would track a foul murderer to his lair. He spun as the footsteps drew nearer.
"Hurry!" he cried. "This way! Follow me—"
In a bound, he hurdled the bar, lingered at the door only long enough to let the others mark his course. For they had burst into the room, now, a full score of them. Excited, hard-bitten dogs of space, quick-triggered and willing. Once more he cried for help.
"After him! Come on! He—"
And then—disaster struck! For a reedy voice broke from the van of the mob. The voice of the Martian bartender.
"That's him!" he piped sibilantly. "That's the man! He's a desperate criminal, wanted on four planets for murder! The Patrolman came to arrest him— and now he's murdered the Spacie !"
II
The stunning injustice of that accusation came close to costing Chip Warren his life. For a split second he stood motionless in the doorway, gaping lips forming denial. Words which were never to be uttered, for suddenly a raw-boned miner wrenched a Moeller from its holster, leveled and fired.
The hot tongue of death licked hungrily at the young spaceman's cheek, scorched air crackled in his eardrums. Now was no time to squander in vain argument. Chip ducked, spun, and hurled himself through the doorway. There still remained one hope. That he might catch the real murderer, and in that way clear himself....
But the door led to a small, deserted vestibule, and it to an alleyway behind Xu'ul's Solarest. Viewing that maze of byways and passages, Chip knew his hope was futile. There remained but one thing to do. Get out of here. But quick!
It was no hard task. The labyrinth swallowed him as it had engulfed the scarred killer; in a few minutes even the footsteps of his pursuers could no longer be heard. And Chip worked his cautious way back to the spaceport, and to the bin wherein was cradled the Chickadee .
Syd Palmer looked up in surprise as Chip let himself in the electro-lock. The chubby engineer gasped, "Salvation, look what the cat drug in! His high-flying Nibs! What's the matter, Chip? Night-life too much for you?"
"Never mind that now!" panted Chip. "Is this tin can ready to roll? Warm the hypos. We're lifting gravs—"
Palmer said anxiously, "Now, wait a minute! The men haven't quite finished plating the hull, Chip!"
"Can't help that! We've got important business. In a very few minutes— Ahh! There he goes now!" Chip had gone to the perilens the moment he entered the ship; now he saw in its reflector that which he had expected. The gushing orange spume of a spaceship roaring from its cradle. "Hurry, Syd!"
There were a lot of things Syd Palmer wanted to ask. He wanted to know who went where ; he was bursting with curiosity about the "important business" which had brought his pal back from town in such a rush; his keen eye also had detected a needle-gun burn on Chip's coat-sleeve. But he was too good a companion to waste time now on such trivia.
"O.Q.," he snapped. "It's your pigeon!"
And he disappeared. They heard his voice calling to the workmen, the scuff of equipment being disengaged from the Chickadee's hull, the thin, high whine of warming hypatomics. Salvation looked at Warren quizzically.
"It smells," he ventured gently, "like trouble."
"It is trouble," Chip told him. "Plenty trouble!"
"In that case—" said the old man mildly—"I guess I'd better get the rotor stripped for action." He stepped to the gunnery turret, dropped the fore-irons and stripped their weapon for action. "'Be ye men of peace,'" he intoned, "'but gird firmly thy loins for righteous battle!' Thus saith the Lord God which is Jehovah. Selah!"
Then came Syd's cry from the depths of the hyporoom.
"All set, Chip! Lift gravs!"
Warren's finger found a stud. And with a gusty roar the Chickadee rocketed into space on a pillar of flame.
Two hours later, Chip was still following the bright pinpoint of scarlet which marked the course of his quarry.
In the time that had elapsed since their take-off, he had told his friends the whole story. When he told about the Lorelei, Salvation Smith's seamy old features screwed up in a perplexed grimace. "A woman pirate in the Belt, son? I find it hard to believe. Yet—" And when he described the death of Johnny Haldane, anger smoldered in the missionary's eyes, and Syd Palmer's hands knotted into tight, white fists. Said Syd, "A man with a scar, eh? Well, we'll catch him sooner or later. And when we do—" His tone boded no good to the man who had slain an old and loved friend.
"As a matter of fact," offered Salvation, "we've got him now. Any time you say the word, Chip. We're faster than he is. We can close in on him in five minutes."
"I know," nodded Warren grimly. "But we won't do it—yet. I'm borrowing a bit of Johnny's strategy. I've been plotting his course. As soon as I'm sure of his destination, we'll take care of him . But our first and most vital problem is to locate the Lorelei's hideaway."
Syd said, "That's all right with me, chum. I like a good scrap as much as the next guy. Better, maybe. But this isn't our concern, strictly speaking. What we ought to do is report this matter to the Space Patrol, let them take care of it."
Salvation shook his head.
"That's where you're mistaken, Sydney. This is very much our concern. So much so, in fact, that we dare not make port again until it's cleared up. I think you have forgotten that it is not the scar-faced man who is wanted for the killing of Haldane—but Chip!"
"B-but—" gasped Palmer—"b-but that's ridiculous! Chip and Johnny were old buddies. Lifelong friends!"
"Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence indicates Chip's guilt. Twenty men saw him standing over Johnny's dead body, with a flame-pistol in his hand. And the barkeep heard Johnny 'arrest' Chip and accuse him of murder!"
Chip said ruefully, "That's right, Syd. It was only a joke, but it backfired. The bartender thought Johnny meant it. He scooted out of there like a bat out of Hades. I'm in it up to my neck unless we can bring back evidence that Scarface actually did the killing. And that may not be so easy."
He stirred restlessly. "But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now our job is to keep this rat in sight. We've gone farther already than I expected we would." He turned to the old preacher.
"Where do you think we're going, Padre? Out of the Belt entirely?"
"I've been wondering that myself, son. I don't know for sure, of course, but it looks to me as if we're going for the Bog. If so, you'd better keep a weather-eye peeled."
"The Bog!" Chip had never penetrated the planetoids so deeply before, but he knew of the Bog by hearsay. All men did. A treacherous region of tightly packed asteroids, a mad and whirling scramble of the gigantic rocks which, aeons ago, had been a planet. Few spacemen dared penetrate the Bog. Of those who did dare, few returned to tell the tale. "The Bog! Say! I'd better keep a sharp lookout!"
He turned to the perilens once more, fastened an eye to its lens. And then—
"Syd!" he cried. "Salvation! Look! She—she—!"
He pressed the plunger that transferred the perilens image to the central viewscreen. And as he did so, a phantom filled the area which should have revealed yawning space, gay with the spangles of a myriad glowing orbs. The vision of an unbelievably beautiful girl, the golden-crowned embodiment of a man's fondest dreaming, eyes wide with an indistinguishable emotion, arms stretched wide in mute appeal.
And from the throats of all came simultaneous recognition.
" The Lorelei! "
At the same moment came a plea from the enchantress of space through a second medium. For no reason anyone could explain, the ship's telaudio wakened to life; over it came to their ears the actual words of the girl:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Even though he knew this to be only a ruse, a deliberate, dastardly trap set for the unwary, Chip Warren's pulse leaped in hot response to that desperate plea. Even with the warning of Johnny Haldane fresh in his memory, some gallantry deep within him spurred him to the aid of this lovely vision. Here was a woman a man could live for, fight for, die for! A woman like no other in the universe.
Then common sense came to his rescue. He wrenched his gaze from the tempting shadow, cried: "Kill that wavelength! Tune the lens on another beam, Syd!"
Palmer, bedazzled but obedient, spun the dial of the perilens . Despite his vastly improved science Man had never yet succeeded in devising a transparent medium through which to view the void wherein he soared; the perilens was a device which translated impinging light-waves into a picture of that which lay outside the ship's hull. When or where electrical disturbances existed in space, its frequency could be changed for greater clarity. This was what Syd now attempted.
But to no avail! For it mattered not which cycle he tuned to—the image persisted. Still on the viewscreen that pleading figure beckoned piteously. And still the cabin rang to the prayers of that heart-tugging voice:
" Help! Oh, help! Can anyone hear me? Help —"
Gone, now, was any fascination that thrilling vision might previously have held for Chip Warren. Understanding of their plight dawned coldly upon him, and his brow became dark with anger.
" We're blanketed! Flying blind! Salvation, radio a general alarm! Syd, jazz the hypos to max. Shift trajectory to fourteen-oh-three North and loft ... fire No. 3 jet...."
He had hurled himself into the bucket-shaped pilot's seat; now his fingers played the controls like those of a mad organist. The Chickadee groaned from prow to stern, trembled like a tortured thing as he thrust it into a rising spiral.
It was a desperate chance he was taking. Increasing his speed thus, it was certain he would be spotted by the man he had been following; the flaming jets of the Chickadee must form a crimson arch against black space visible for hundreds—thousands!—of miles. Nor was there any way of knowing what lay in the path Chip thus blindly chose. Titanic death might loom on every side. But they had to fight clear of this spot of blindness, clear their instruments....
And then it came! A jarring concussion that smashed against the prow of the Chickadee like a battering ram. Chip flew headlong out of his bucket to spreadeagle on the heaving iron floor. He heard, above the grinding plaint of shattered steel the bellowing prayer of Salvation Smith:
"We've crashed! 'Into Thy hands, O Lord of old—'"
Then Syd's angry cry, "Crashed, hell! He's smashed us with a tractor-blast!"
Chip stared at his companion numbly.
"But—but that's impossible! We're plated with ek! A tractor-cannon couldn't hurt us—"
" Half-plated! " howled Syd savagely. "And those damn fools started working from the stern of the Chickadee ! We're vulnerable up front, and that's where he got us! In a minute this can will be leaking like a sieve. I'll get out bulgers. Hold 'er to her course, Chip!"
He dove for the lockers wherein were hung the space-suits, tore them hastily from their hangers. Chip again spun the perilens vernier. No good! No space ... no stars ... just a beautiful phantom crying them to certain doom. By now he was aware that from a dozen sprung plates air was seeping, but he fought down despair. While there remained hope, a man had to keep on fighting.
He scrambled back into the bucket-seat, experimented with controls that answered sluggishly. Salvation had sprung to the rotor-gun, was now angrily jerking its lanyard, lacing the void with death-dealing bursts that had no mark. The old man's eyes were brands of fire, his white hair clung wetly to his forehead. His rage was terrible to behold.
"'Yes, truly shall I destroy them!'" he cried, "'who loose their stealth upon me like a thief from the night—'"
Then suddenly there came a second and more frightful blow. The straining Chickadee stopped as though pole-axed by a gigantic fist. Stopped and shuddered and screamed in metal agony. This time inertia flung Chip headlong, helpless, into the control racks. Brazen studs took the impact of his body; crushing pain banded about his temples, and a red wetness ran into his eyes, blurring and blinding him, burning.
For an instant there flamed before him a universe of incandescent stars, weaving, shimmering, merging. The vision of a woman whose hair was a golden glory....
After that—nothing!
III
From a billion miles away, from a bourne unguessable thousands of light-years distant, came the faint, far whisper of a voice. Nearer and nearer it came, and ever faster, till it throbbed upon Chip's eardrums with booming savagery.
"—coming to, now. Good! We'll soon find out—"
Chip opened his eyes, too dazed, at first, to understand the situation in which he found himself. Gone was the familiar control-turret of the Chickadee , gone the bulger into which he had so hastily clambered. He lay on the parched, rocky soil of a—a something. A planetoid, perhaps. And he was surrounded by a motley crew of strangers: scum of all the planets that circle the Sun....
Then recollection flooded back upon him, sudden and complete. The chase ... the call of the fateful Lorelei ... the crash! New strength, born of anger, surged through him. He lifted his head.
"My—my companions?" he demanded weakly.
The leader of those who encircled him, a mighty hulk of a man, massive of shoulder and thigh, black-haired, with an unshaven blue jaw, raven-bright eyes and a jutting, aquiline nose like the beak of a hawk, loosed a satisfied grunt.
"Ah! Back to normal, eh, sailor? Damn near time!"
Climbing to his feet sent a swift wave of giddiness through Chip—but he managed it. He fought down the vertigo which threatened to overwhelm him, and confronted the big man boldly.
"What," he stormed, "is the meaning of this?"
The giant stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. Then his raven-bright eyes glittered; he slapped a trunklike thigh and guffawed in boisterous mirth.
"Hear that?" he roared to his companions. "Quite a guy, ain't he?
'What's the meanin' o' this?' he asks! Game little fightin' cock, hey?" Then he sobered abruptly, and a grim light replaced the amusement in his eyes. Here was not a man to be trifled with, Chip realized. His tone assumed a biting edge. "The meanin' is, my bucko," he answered mirthlessly, "that you've run afoul o' your last reef. Unless you have a sane head on your shoulders, and you're willing to talk fast and straight!"
"Talk?"
"Don't stall. We've already unloaded your bins. We found it. And a nice haul, too. Thanks for lettin' us know it was on the way." The burly one chuckled coarsely. "We'd have took it, anyway, but you helped matters out by comin' to us."
Johnny Haldane had been right, then. Chip remembered his friend's ominous warning. "—if your message was intercepted, you may have played into the hands of—" He said slowly, "Then you are the Lorelei's men?"
"The who? Never mind that, bucko, just talk. That ekalastron—where did it come from?"
And it occurred to Warren suddenly that although the big man did hold the whip hand, he was still not in possession of the most important secret of all! While the location of the ekalastron mine remained a secret, a deadlock existed.
"And if I won't tell—?" he countered shrewdly.
"Why, then, sailor—" The pirate leader's hamlike fists tightened, and a cold light glinted in his eyes—"why, then I guess maybe I'll have to beat it out o' you!"
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What is the setting of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Contagion by Katherine MacLean.
Relevant chunks:
CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
Question:
What is the setting of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins with the ship, the Explorer, landing on an unknown planet. It has an Earth-like forest in the fall. The leaves were of various colors, green, copper, purple, and red. To get to this planet, known as Minos, it took 36 light-years from Earth. The ship they traveled on is described as being like a silver and black column. It was previously a yacht that was retrofitted to become the Explorer. \n\nThey take Pat back to the ship and they all decontaminate. Once they are done, they go to the dining hall for food. After eating their food in the dining, June and some of the other doctors return to the laboratory to inspect the mice. \n",
"The story begins on Minos, a lovely planet reminding Earth. A party of doctors in spacesuits and earphones are moving through the forest, which looks like a beautiful Earth forest in the fall. The trail is narrow, and the spaceship, 'Explorer', towers behind. The ship is huge and it looks like a skyscraper within the forest. It is a polished silver and black column which used to be a yacht. There are many passengers abroad, staring at the planet through the windows. There are cabins, a cafeteria, a control room, a library and laboratories inside. Before coming in, Pat is tested on the ground near the ship. The ship has a cureall - a cure from any disease. Not to get sick before it's used, then testings are done by machines. There is Reno's plane which travels with the news and notions. There are hamsters in one of the laboratories. From the view plate mountains, forests, hills and fields are visible. The ship used to have ballrooms and dining rooms but all was transformed. ",
"The story is set on Minos, a planet that Earthmen had found and landed on in hopes of finding a habitable place to colonize. Minos is visually and physically very similar to Earth, with forests, meadows, clouds, and breathable air. The animals are also similar to Earth animals. However, there is uncertainty about Minos, and risk of the planet carrying diseases that would kill the humans. Part of the story takes place aboard The Explorer, a large yacht-converted-spaceship. The Explorer is silver and black and towers over the forests of Minos, and inside the ship has several compartments, including precautionary medical rooms, staterooms, and a dining hall.",
"The story is set on the planet of Minos. The forest that the doctors trek through is said to be similar to Earth in the fall, but it is not fall. The colors of the leaves themselves are green, copper, purple, and fiery red. There are also patches of bright greenish sunlight and wind. On the planet, the small town of Alexandria is also there. The Explorer itself is converted from a yacht with a synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals. However, it does not have the newest speed drives. Inside of the ship, there are multiple stalls and rooms for disinfecting. There is also a locker room with shower stalls and a wall mirror. The room has a wall phone too. The Explorer has a viewplate, showcasing the outside landscape of mountains on the horizon. The low rolling hills are bronze and red, with patches of clear green in the fields. The cafeteria is converted from an old dining room, so it still has the original finely grained wood of the ceilings and walls. It also features sound absorbance, soft music spools, and intimate small light tables to eat at. There are trays to use to take food back to a table too. The ship has many working and living quarters as well, including a laboratory to do experiments in and study the hamsters. "
] |
50774
|
CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
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What is the melting sickness?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Contagion by Katherine MacLean.
Relevant chunks:
CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
Question:
What is the melting sickness?
Answer:
|
[
"The melting sickness is described as a type of plague by Pat. He informs the doctors that it arrived soon after the colony settled on the planet and killed all but one particular familiar which happened to be immune to the disease. The disease is described as being brutal and not even doctors were able to avoid it. According to Pat, there has not been any recurrence of the melting sickness and no other diseases to note. ",
"The melting sickness is the name the local colonists gave to some kind of a plague which killed all the colonists except the Meads families. It happened in a couple years after arrival and only the Meads turned out to be immune, that's why all the people on Minos look similar - they are related. The disease was so rapid and furious that it killed all the doctors and, therefore, wasn't studied. The rest of the colonists took off on the ship to escape, and left the Meads without any books or technologies, so they don't have doctors and hunt with bows. This disease is still carried by the Meads without harming them, it's also unable to record through testings - all the tests are good but the hamsters die.",
"The melting sickness is a plague that spread across the first colony on Minos. The melting sickness killed everyone except for the Mead family, who seemed to be immune to the disease. It is unsure what exactly the melting sickness is or its cure, because the doctors working to learn about it ended up dying during the plague. Since the, plague, there have been no more cases of the melting sickness on Minos, but the people on The Explorer still need to take precautions in case the germs prevailed. When the experiment is run on the hamsters, three of them die, one of them losing its hair. ",
"Melting sickness is the equivalent of a plague-type disease on Minos. Patrick does not know much about the melting sickness, but his father had explained it to him as being pretty gruesome. The doctors died too soon to find out what the disease was and what to do to cure it. It was also impossible to train more doctors or send them to civilization because their spaceship that served as a power plant with all of the necessary books went into the sky and never came back. Although Patrick says that there are no more recurrences of melting sickness, it is revealed that the colony peoples still carry the germs of the disease, which means that they must disinfect before establishing contact. The hamsters can fight off melting sickness alone, but the ones who died had strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine. George also says that they can not find any external micro-organisms. Everything present is leucosis and anemia; fever is only for the ones who fought it off. "
] |
50774
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CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
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What criteria for health safety do the members of the Explorer follow?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Contagion by Katherine MacLean.
Relevant chunks:
CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
Question:
What criteria for health safety do the members of the Explorer follow?
Answer:
|
[
"Potential pathogens are of grave concern to the members of the Explorer. To ensure their safety, they send out a hunting party of medical doctors to gather data on the diseases present on the planet Minos. The doctors wear protective gear during this trip. \n\nWhen they bring Pat back to their ship, they require him to go through tests before he is allowed onto the ship. They include needing to de-microbe him and taking specimens from him. Max takes spinal fluid samples from Pat during this process. Pat then went through a long process where he was guided by mechanical voices to go through many different stages of decontamination. \n\nWhile the group of doctors do not have to go through the same process as Pat to board the ship, they go through their own decontamination process. There is a stall for spacesuit decontamination that shoots out disinfectants and baths of ultraviolet radiation for sterilization. \n\nThe ship was also governed by interplanetary health laws. These laws demanded that ship equipment protecting against diseases had to be completely mechanical in operation and efficient. \n",
"There is a protocol developed to prevent any danger. The ship has been to various planets and faced plague, so they are very cautious. The doctors exit the ship in spacesuits to explore the planet, while common people have to stay inside. The animals are tested on diseases. There are many laboratories and tools on the ship, even hamsters for experiments. There is a cureall stored aboard - a cure from any alien illness. All the procedures are done mechanically to avoid contact. There are different rooms for conducting all the possible testings and experiments. No contact is allowed before the test results. ",
"In order to avoid any risk of contracting disease, people on The Explorer do not interact with foreign people or environments unless they are sure that there is no present disease that can be spread. Because of this, people on The Explorer have been in isolation. When the medical crew first encounters Pat, they are wearing spacesuits outside to protect themselves from the atmosphere, and before he boards the ship, they run several tests on him and make him go through several cleansing procedures. In order to find out if Pat has any diseases, they draw his blood and inject it into hamsters, running an experiment to see if there is cause for concern.",
"The criteria for safety that all members of the Explorer follow involves many tests and disinfecting. Before Pat can enter, they must first check if he carries the germs of melting sickness. Even when the doctors go on, they must stand in stalls for spacesuit decontamination. This decontamination involves being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant and being bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation. The Explorer also houses the Nucleocat Cureall, a solution of enzymes that disintegrates any non-human cell. However, as an extra precaution, there are stalls that loop similar to a rabbit maze. There is an area for soap and shower, a blood test, solutions to drink, a germicidal ultraviolet bath, sonic blast shaking, germicidal mists, and immunizing solutions. After all of this, there is also a room with high temperature and extreme dryness; more fluids are also dripped into the disinfecting person’s veins during this time. These are all necessary measures to ensure absolute cleanliness and destroy any chance of anyone being a suspected carrier of infection."
] |
50774
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CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Contagion by Katherine MacLean.
Relevant chunks:
CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins with the Explorer ship landing on an unknown planet. The ships inhabitants are careful of any potential diseases and so do not readily disembark to explore their new surroundings. Instead, they send a crew of four medical doctors to go on a hunt party to understand the types of pathogens on the planet. The four doctors in the hunt party are June Walton, George Barton, Hal Barton, and Max. George and Hal are brothers. Max and June are in a relationship together. \n\nThey walk through the forest, shooting different animals that they encounter to test for diseases. As they walk through the forest, they encounter a man who speaks English. His name is Patrick Mead and he introduces the party to the planet, known as Minos. The man explains how his group was 300 miles away from their ship. \n\nPatrick and the group asks questions of each other. Patrick notes that he is shocked to see a variety of different looking people as those on Minos all look very similar to each other. The group and Pat all head back to the ship where they explain to Pat that he has to go through a process of decontamination. They begin by taking specimen from Pat and spinal fluid samples from him. Pat then continues on to the rest of the decontamination process that the others do not have to go through. \n\nWhile Pat is going through decontamination, so is the rest of the doctors – but in a different process. During June’s process, she is seen admiring her body. Once they are done, they go to the dining hall to eat. A woman asks the doctors when they will be able to let out of the ship to explore the new land, and Max answers that it might happen soon. Many people are excited about the possibility because they have all been isolated in space for the past year and a half. When they enter the cafeteria, they can hear passengers excitedly gossiping about Pat’s arrival. As soon as pat enters the room, people approach him eagerly awaiting to talk to him. During the meal, Pat explains how a geneticist on the planet adapted the citizens’ cells to their planet so that they would not destroy the planet foraging for food. \n\nDuring the conversation over food, Hall enters the room to inform them that the hamsters showed signs of infection. This means that Pat’s people still do carry the disease, the morning sickness. Pat assures them that his people would be willing to be de-infected. The crew then send Reno Ulrich to go to Pat’s town to make relations with the people.\n\nAfter eating, June goes back to the laboratory. She sees Pat and the beautiful Shelia Davenport walking in her direction. She mockingly acknowledges his presence when he walks past her. \n",
"The hunt party of the 'Explorer' proceeds through a forest on planet Minos in spacesuits and communicates through earphones. The forest reminds Earth but can be dangerous, so the rest of the people stay on the ship, longing to be outside. At that time, the party of doctors is hunting animals to test for contagion, which has been the reason for massive deaths on other planets. Suddenly, an animal-like man, Patrick Mead, appears, who was sent by the Mayor from far away. The party is surprised to see an English-speaking human as there is no colony on Minos according to the map. Patrick informs them that the population of Minos is one hundred and fifty, and the planet has room for more. The variety of the group's appearances puzzles Patrick as in his opinion all people should look like June, a member of the party. She looks similar to Patrick himself - tanned, tall, with freckles and wavy red hair. He tells about a plague which happened in the past and killed everyone except the Mead families who were immune. As all the people alive are related, they look similar. The disease was called the melting sickness and it killed all the doctors before they studied it. The colony's ship went off forever to avoid the contagion and took everything with them. The party returns to the ship with Pat, considering the planet the desirable home. Pat admires the ship as he was raised on Minos without any luxuries or technologies. Max, June's boyfriend and also a doctor, tests Pat for the melting sickness before letting him into the ship. Reno's scout plane comes in surprise and is updated about the local colony. The newcomers have cureall, a multi-purpose cure from any alien intrusion to the body, but for safety the ship equipment for testings is fully mechanical. Pat's positive attitude is opposite to the usual ship talk and, therefore, pleasing for June. The passengers abroad are staring outside and stake places for their future houses. People are eager to meet Pat after a year and a half in isolation. Soon, he comes into the cafeteria and is surrounded by curious passengers. June becomes jealous of the female attention to Pat and compares him to Max, with the least significantly losing in appearance. Pat mentions that local food won't digest for the newcomers unless they are adapted by a test-tube evolution, a method used by his ancestor to avoid destroying the local flora but rather adapt the Mead's genes to local food. That leads to the inability to digest the ship's food, only the products of Minos. For some reason June feels fear. Hal comes and reports the hamsters tested before Pat was de-infected to be dead. Reno sets off to the colony to persuade the locals to be de-infected and to give their agreement through voting. The dead hamsters have nothing wrong in their bodies and the reasons are unknown. June sees Pat and admires him from afar. ",
"The story begins on Minos, an Earthlike planet where The Explorer has landed in hopes of colonization. The medical crew on the ship, consisting of June Walton, Max Stark, and Hal and George Barton, step outside with their spacesuits to hunt animals and test them for disease, cautious of potential plagues that could wipe out their ship. They surprisingly come across a human who speaks English, finding out that Minos had been colonized prior to their arrival. The man introduces himself as Patrick Mead. He explains that the population on Minos is small, only consisting of the Mead family, all which look alike. Pat goes on to tell the crew that a plague had struck the original colony when they arrived, called the melting sickness. The mysterious disease killed everyone except for the Mead family, and the people on Minos had tried to fly back into space for escape, but the crew never came back. The crew takes Pat back to their ship, and explains to him that in order to protect themselves against disease, tests and precautions are necessary. They run several procedures on Pat, including drawing his blood, bathing him in disinfectant, and injecting his blood into hamsters to see if he carried disease. June, having developed an interest in Pat, finds herself to be drawn to him as time passes. Dinner time eventually comes, and all the people aboard The Explorer eventually hear news of the new stranger. In the meantime, Reno flies a plane to and from the ship, carrying messages to the town on Minos. Pat arrives to the dining hall, and is immediately swarmed with interest and excitement. He tells stories of Minos and answers the many questions he is asked, and is given particular attention by the women on the ship, which June feels upset about. Len Marlow, a plant geneticist, listens as Pat tells him about food on Minos; when they had first arrived, they were unable to digest the plants and animals due to genetic differences. Their head of the clan, Alexander Mead, had managed to take human cells and adapt them to the life on Minos, ultimately allowing for them to eat and digest the food there. Pat implies that this process is necessary if the people on The Explorer want to settle on Minos. Hal Burton appears and informs the crew that three of the hamsters have died, and calls for the people on Minos to be disinfected. As June observes the hamsters, she walks past Pat, who kindly acknowledges her.",
"The medical party of the Explorer is going hunting along a narrow trail in the forest. June Walton asks if George Barton has gotten anything from his shot, and he says it looks like a duck. Hal Barton, his brother, says that the creatures won’t look like ducks. Max tells June that he loves her and not to get eaten by a dragon. Many people wait on the Explorer spaceship to go outside, but it is up to the four medicos to hunt the animals and test them for disease. Someone fires at a specimen they see, but it turns out to be a man who has the three-day growth of red stubble. The man introduces the planet as Minos and says that the mayor sends his greetings from Alexandria. June is shocked to hear that after thirty-six light years of space travel, there is already a colony of one hundred and fifty living here. The man introduces himself as Patrick Mead, and he is shocked to see the wide variety of humans who have come from the Explorer. He mentions that there was a plague too, but it has disappeared, and there are no other illnesses. Pat goes with them back to the Explorer and admires all of the technology since he has been raised on Minos his entire life. When Pat asks to go abroad, Hal tells him that he must go through a few tests for melting sickness. Max performs various tests on him as Hal signals for Reno Unrich to drop a note in Pat’s town to explain that contact has been made. Pat goes through more tests, which the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall called the Nucleocat Cureall could help ensure. June checks on Pat again and tells him that there will be a banquet after he has finished the tests. A Canadian woman named Bess St. Clair asks when the people will be let out. Max tells her that they will be going out soon because of the castaway colony. Bess is excited, and Max tells her that she can show Pat the way to the dining hall. Shortly after June and Max go into the dining hall, Pat appears and gets swarmed by a large crowd. They rescue him so that he can eat, but people come by anyway. All of the women linger longer, and June even begins to question her love for Max. Pat reveals that the people on Minos have been chemically adapted by Alexander P. Mead, who had turned human cells and made them into phagocytes. Eventually, these leucocytes are put back into humans once they have become successful. Hal then says that the colony people have the germs of melting sickness, to which Pat says that health is a top priority; the colony will need to vote on first, however. Reno is excited to study the people further, while June and George study the hamsters. As June wanders down the hall, Pat walks by, and they make contact. "
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50774
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CONTAGION
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction October 1950. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Minos was such a lovely planet. Not a thing seemed wrong with it. Excepting the food, perhaps. And a disease that wasn't really.
It was like an Earth forest in the fall, but it was not fall. The forest leaves were green and copper and purple and fiery red, and a wind sent patches of bright greenish sunlight dancing among the leaf shadows.
The hunt party of the Explorer filed along the narrow trail, guns ready, walking carefully, listening to the distant, half familiar cries of strange birds.
A faint crackle of static in their earphones indicated that a gun had been fired.
"Got anything?" asked June Walton. The helmet intercom carried her voice to the ears of the others without breaking the stillness of the forest.
"Took a shot at something," explained George Barton's cheerful voice in her earphones. She rounded a bend of the trail and came upon Barton standing peering up into the trees, his gun still raised. "It looked like a duck."
"This isn't Central Park," said Hal Barton, his brother, coming into sight. His green spacesuit struck an incongruous note against the bronze and red forest. "They won't all look like ducks," he said soberly.
"Maybe some will look like dragons. Don't get eaten by a dragon, June," came Max's voice quietly into her earphones. "Not while I still love you." He came out of the trees carrying the blood sample kit, and touched her glove with his, the grin on his ugly beloved face barely visible in the mingled light and shade. A patch of sunlight struck a greenish glint from his fishbowl helmet.
They walked on. A quarter of a mile back, the space ship Explorer towered over the forest like a tapering skyscraper, and the people of the ship looked out of the viewplates at fresh winds and sunlight and clouds, and they longed to be outside.
But the likeness to Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat. There was warning enough in the past. Colonies had vanished, and traveled spaceways drifted with the corpses of ships which had touched on some plague planet.
The people of the ship waited while their doctors, in airtight spacesuits, hunted animals to test them for contagion.
The four medicos, for June Walton was also a doctor, filed through the alien homelike forest, walking softly, watching for motion among the copper and purple shadows.
They saw it suddenly, a lighter moving copper patch among the darker browns. Reflex action swung June's gun into line, and behind her someone's gun went off with a faint crackle of static, and made a hole in the leaves beside the specimen. Then for a while no one moved.
This one looked like a man, a magnificently muscled, leanly graceful, humanlike animal. Even in its callused bare feet, it was a head taller than any of them. Red-haired, hawk-faced and darkly tanned, it stood breathing heavily, looking at them without expression. At its side hung a sheath knife, and a crossbow was slung across one wide shoulder.
They lowered their guns.
"It needs a shave," Max said reasonably in their earphones, and he reached up to his helmet and flipped the switch that let his voice be heard. "Something we could do for you, Mac?"
The friendly drawl was the first voice that had broken the forest sounds. June smiled suddenly. He was right. The strict logic of evolution did not demand beards; therefore a non-human would not be wearing a three day growth of red stubble.
Still panting, the tall figure licked dry lips and spoke. "Welcome to Minos. The Mayor sends greetings from Alexandria."
"English?" gasped June.
"We were afraid you would take off again before I could bring word to you.... It's three hundred miles.... We saw your scout plane pass twice, but we couldn't attract its attention."
June looked in stunned silence at the stranger leaning against the tree. Thirty-six light years—thirty-six times six trillion miles of monotonous space travel—to be told that the planet was already settled! "We didn't know there was a colony here," she said. "It is not on the map."
"We were afraid of that," the tall bronze man answered soberly. "We have been here three generations and yet no traders have come."
Max shifted the kit strap on his shoulder and offered a hand. "My name is Max Stark, M.D. This is June Walton, M.D., Hal Barton, M.D., and George Barton, Hal's brother, also M.D."
"Patrick Mead is the name," smiled the man, shaking hands casually.
"Just a hunter and bridge carpenter myself. Never met any medicos before."
The grip was effortless but even through her airproofed glove June could feel that the fingers that touched hers were as hard as padded steel.
"What—what is the population of Minos?" she asked.
He looked down at her curiously for a moment before answering. "Only one hundred and fifty." He smiled. "Don't worry, this isn't a city planet yet. There's room for a few more people." He shook hands with the Bartons quickly. "That is—you are people, aren't you?" he asked startlingly.
"Why not?" said Max with a poise that June admired.
"Well, you are all so—so—" Patrick Mead's eyes roamed across the faces of the group. "So varied."
They could find no meaning in that, and stood puzzled.
"I mean," Patrick Mead said into the silence, "all these—interesting different hair colors and face shapes and so forth—" He made a vague wave with one hand as if he had run out of words or was anxious not to insult them.
"Joke?" Max asked, bewildered.
June laid a hand on his arm. "No harm meant," she said to him over the intercom. "We're just as much of a shock to him as he is to us."
She addressed a question to the tall colonist on outside sound. "What should a person look like, Mr. Mead?"
He indicated her with a smile. "Like you."
June stepped closer and stood looking up at him, considering her own description. She was tall and tanned, like him; had a few freckles, like him; and wavy red hair, like his. She ignored the brightly humorous blue eyes.
"In other words," she said, "everyone on the planet looks like you and me?"
Patrick Mead took another look at their four faces and began to grin.
"Like me, I guess. But I hadn't thought of it before. I did not think that people could have different colored hair or that noses could fit so many ways onto faces. I was judging by my own appearance, but I suppose any fool can walk on his hands and say the world is upside down!" He laughed and sobered. "But then why wear spacesuits? The air is breathable."
"For safety," June told him. "We can't take any chances on plague."
Pat Mead was wearing nothing but a loin cloth and his weapons, and the wind ruffled his hair. He looked comfortable, and they longed to take off the stuffy spacesuits and feel the wind against their own skins. Minos was like home, like Earth.... But they were strangers.
"Plague," Pat Mead said thoughtfully. "We had one here. It came two years after the colony arrived and killed everyone except the Mead families. They were immune. I guess we look alike because we're all related, and that's why I grew up thinking that it is the only way people can look."
Plague. "What was the disease?" Hal Barton asked.
"Pretty gruesome, according to my father. They called it the melting sickness. The doctors died too soon to find out what it was or what to do about it."
"You should have trained for more doctors, or sent to civilization for some." A trace of impatience was in George Barton's voice.
Pat Mead explained patiently, "Our ship, with the power plant and all the books we needed, went off into the sky to avoid the contagion, and never came back. The crew must have died." Long years of hardship were indicated by that statement, a colony with electric power gone and machinery stilled, with key technicians dead and no way to replace them. June realized then the full meaning of the primitive sheath knife and bow.
"Any recurrence of melting sickness?" asked Hal Barton.
"No."
"Any other diseases?"
"Not a one."
Max was eyeing the bronze red-headed figure with something approaching awe. "Do you think all the Meads look like that?" he said to June on the intercom. "I wouldn't mind being a Mead myself!"
Their job had been made easy by the coming of Pat. They went back to the ship laughing, exchanging anecdotes with him. There was nothing now to keep Minos from being the home they wanted, except the melting sickness, and, forewarned against it, they could take precautions.
The polished silver and black column of the Explorer seemed to rise higher and higher over the trees as they neared it. Then its symmetry blurred all sense of specific size as they stepped out from among the trees and stood on the edge of the meadow, looking up.
"Nice!" said Pat. "Beautiful!" The admiration in his voice was warming.
"It was a yacht," Max said, still looking up, "second hand, an old-time beauty without a sign of wear. Synthetic diamond-studded control board and murals on the walls. It doesn't have the new speed drives, but it brought us thirty-six light years in one and a half subjective years. Plenty good enough."
The tall tanned man looked faintly wistful, and June realized that he had never had access to a full library, never seen a movie, never experienced luxury. He had been born and raised on Minos.
"May I go aboard?" Pat asked hopefully.
Max unslung the specimen kit from his shoulder, laid it on the carpet of plants that covered the ground and began to open it.
"Tests first," Hal Barton said. "We have to find out if you people still carry this so-called melting sickness. We'll have to de-microbe you and take specimens before we let you on board. Once on, you'll be no good as a check for what the other Meads might have."
Max was taking out a rack and a stand of preservative bottles and hypodermics.
"Are you going to jab me with those?" Pat asked with interest.
"You're just a specimen animal to me, bud!" Max grinned at Pat Mead, and Pat grinned back. June saw that they were friends already, the tall pantherish colonist, and the wry, black-haired doctor. She felt a stab of guilt because she loved Max and yet could pity him for being smaller and frailer than Pat Mead.
"Lie down," Max told him, "and hold still. We need two spinal fluid samples from the back, a body cavity one in front, and another from the arm."
Pat lay down obediently. Max knelt, and, as he spoke, expertly swabbed and inserted needles with the smooth speed that had made him a fine nerve surgeon on Earth.
High above them the scout helioplane came out of an opening in the ship and angled off toward the west, its buzz diminishing. Then, suddenly, it veered and headed back, and Reno Unrich's voice came tinnily from their earphones:
"What's that you've got? Hey, what are you docs doing down there?" He banked again and came to a stop, hovering fifty feet away. June could see his startled face looking through the glass at Pat.
Hal Barton switched to a narrow radio beam, explained rapidly and pointed in the direction of Alexandria. Reno's plane lifted and flew away over the odd-colored forest.
"The plane will drop a note on your town, telling them you got through to us," Hal Barton told Pat, who was sitting up watching Max dexterously put the blood and spinal fluids into the right bottles without exposing them to air.
"We won't be free to contact your people until we know if they still carry melting sickness," Max added. "You might be immune so it doesn't show on you, but still carry enough germs—if that's what caused it—to wipe out a planet."
"If you do carry melting sickness," said Hal Barton, "we won't be able to mingle with your people until we've cleared them of the disease."
"Starting with me?" Pat asked.
"Starting with you," Max told him ruefully, "as soon as you step on board."
"More needles?"
"Yes, and a few little extras thrown in."
"Rough?"
"It isn't easy."
A few minutes later, standing in the stalls for spacesuit decontamination, being buffeted by jets of hot disinfectant, bathed in glares of sterilizing ultraviolet radiation, June remembered that and compared Pat Mead's treatment to theirs.
In the Explorer , stored carefully in sealed tanks and containers, was the ultimate, multi-purpose cureall. It was a solution of enzymes so like the key catalysts of the human cell nucleus that it caused chemical derangement and disintegration in any non-human cell. Nothing could live in contact with it but human cells; any alien intruder to the body would die. Nucleocat Cureall was its trade name.
But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions.
Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes.
All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him.
June stepped from the last shower stall into the locker room, zipped off her spacesuit with a sigh of relief, and contemplated herself in a wall mirror. Red hair, dark blue eyes, tall....
"I've got a good figure," she said thoughtfully.
Max turned at the door. "Why this sudden interest in your looks?" he asked suspiciously. "Do we stand here and admire you, or do we finally get something to eat?"
"Wait a minute." She went to a wall phone and dialed it carefully, using a combination from the ship's directory. "How're you doing, Pat?"
The phone picked up a hissing of water or spray. There was a startled chuckle. "Voices, too! Hello, June. How do you tell a machine to go jump in the lake?"
"Are you hungry?"
"No food since yesterday."
"We'll have a banquet ready for you when you get out," she told Pat and hung up, smiling. Pat Mead's voice had a vitality and enjoyment which made shipboard talk sound like sad artificial gaiety in contrast.
They looked into the nearby small laboratory where twelve squealing hamsters were protestingly submitting to a small injection each of Pat's blood. In most of them the injection was followed by one of antihistaminics and adaptives. Otherwise the hamster defense system would treat all non-hamster cells as enemies, even the harmless human blood cells, and fight back against them violently.
One hamster, the twelfth, was given an extra large dose of adaptive, so that if there were a disease, he would not fight it or the human cells, and thus succumb more rapidly.
"How ya doing, George?" Max asked.
"Routine," George Barton grunted absently.
On the way up the long spiral ramps to the dining hall, they passed a viewplate. It showed a long scene of mountains in the distance on the horizon, and between them, rising step by step as they grew farther away, the low rolling hills, bronze and red with patches of clear green where there were fields.
Someone was looking out, standing very still, as if she had been there a long time—Bess St. Clair, a Canadian woman. "It looks like Winnipeg," she told them as they paused. "When are you doctors going to let us out of this blithering barberpole? Look," she pointed. "See that patch of field on the south hillside, with the brook winding through it? I've staked that hillside for our house. When do we get out?"
Reno Ulrich's tiny scout plane buzzed slowly in from the distance and began circling lazily.
"Sooner than you think," Max told her. "We've discovered a castaway colony on the planet. They've done our tests for us by just living here. If there's anything here to catch, they've caught it."
"People on Minos?" Bess's handsome ruddy face grew alive with excitement.
"One of them is down in the medical department," June said. "He'll be out in twenty minutes."
"May I go see him?"
"Sure," said Max. "Show him the way to the dining hall when he gets out. Tell him we sent you."
"Right!" She turned and ran down the ramp like a small girl going to a fire. Max grinned at June and she grinned back. After a year and a half of isolation in space, everyone was hungry for the sight of new faces, the sound of unfamiliar voices.
They climbed the last two turns to the cafeteria, and entered to a rich subdued blend of soft music and quiet conversations. The cafeteria was a section of the old dining room, left when the rest of the ship had been converted to living and working quarters, and it still had the original finely grained wood of the ceiling and walls, the sound absorbency, the soft music spools and the intimate small light at each table where people leisurely ate and talked.
They stood in line at the hot foods counter, and behind her June could hear a girl's voice talking excitedly through the murmur of conversation.
"—new man, honest! I saw him through the viewplate when they came in. He's down in the medical department. A real frontiersman."
The line drew abreast of the counters, and she and Max chose three heaping trays, starting with hydroponic mushroom steak, raised in the growing trays of water and chemicals; sharp salad bowl with rose tomatoes and aromatic peppers; tank-grown fish with special sauce; four different desserts, and assorted beverages.
Presently they had three tottering trays successfully maneuvered to a table. Brant St. Clair came over. "I beg your pardon, Max, but they are saying something about Reno carrying messages to a colony of savages, for the medical department. Will he be back soon, do you know?"
Max smiled up at him, his square face affectionate. Everyone liked the shy Canadian. "He's back already. We just saw him come in."
"Oh, fine." St. Clair beamed. "I had an appointment with him to go out and confirm what looks like a nice vein of iron to the northeast. Have you seen Bess? Oh—there she is." He turned swiftly and hurried away.
A very tall man with fiery red hair came in surrounded by an eagerly talking crowd of ship people. It was Pat Mead. He stood in the doorway, alertly scanning the dining room. Sheer vitality made him seem even larger than he was. Sighting June, he smiled and began to thread toward their table.
"Look!" said someone. "There's the colonist!" Shelia, a pretty, jeweled woman, followed and caught his arm. "Did you really swim across a river to come here?"
Overflowing with good-will and curiosity, people approached from all directions. "Did you actually walk three hundred miles? Come, eat with us. Let me help choose your tray."
Everyone wanted him to eat at their table, everyone was a specialist and wanted data about Minos. They all wanted anecdotes about hunting wild animals with a bow and arrow.
"He needs to be rescued," Max said. "He won't have a chance to eat."
June and Max got up firmly, edged through the crowd, captured Pat and escorted him back to their table. June found herself pleased to be claiming the hero of the hour.
Pat sat in the simple, subtly designed chair and leaned back almost voluptuously, testing the way it gave and fitted itself to him. He ran his eyes over the bright tableware and heaped plates. He looked around at the rich grained walls and soft lights at each table. He said nothing, just looking and feeling and experiencing.
"When we build our town and leave the ship," June explained, "we will turn all the staterooms back into the lounges and ballrooms and cocktail bars that used to be inside."
"Oh, I'm not complaining," Pat said negligently. He cocked his head to the music, and tried to locate its source.
"That's big of you," said Max with gentle irony.
They fell to, Pat beginning the first meal he had had in more than a day.
Most of the other diners finished when they were halfway through, and began walking over, diffidently at first, then in another wave of smiling faces, handshakes, and introductions. Pat was asked about crops, about farming methods, about rainfall and floods, about farm animals and plant breeding, about the compatibility of imported Earth seeds with local ground, about mines and strata.
There was no need to protect him. He leaned back in his chair and drawled answers with the lazy ease of a panther; where he could think of no statistic, he would fill the gap with an anecdote. It developed that he enjoyed spinning campfire yarns and especially being the center of interest.
Between bouts of questions, he ate with undiminished and glowing relish.
June noticed that the female specialists were prolonging the questions more than they needed, clustering around the table laughing at his jokes, until presently Pat was almost surrounded by pretty faces, eager questions, and chiming laughs. Shelia the beautiful laughed most chimingly of all.
June nudged Max, and Max shrugged indifferently. It wasn't anything a man would pay attention to, perhaps. But June watched Pat for a moment more, then glanced uneasily back to Max. He was eating and listening to Pat's answers and did not feel her gaze. For some reason Max looked almost shrunken to her. He was shorter than she had realized; she had forgotten that he was only the same height as herself. She was dimly aware of the clear lilting chatter of female voices increasing at Pat's end of the table.
"That guy's a menace," Max said, and laughed to himself, cutting another slice of hydroponic mushroom steak. "What's eating you?" he added, glancing aside at her when he noticed her sudden stillness.
"Nothing," she said hastily, but she did not turn back to watching Pat Mead. She felt disloyal. Pat was only a superb animal. Max was the man she loved. Or—was he? Of course he was, she told herself angrily. They had gone colonizing together because they wanted to spend their lives together; she had never thought of marrying any other man. Yet the sense of dissatisfaction persisted, and along with it a feeling of guilt.
Len Marlow, the protein tank-culture technician responsible for the mushroom steaks, had wormed his way into the group and asked Pat a question. Now he was saying, "I don't dig you, Pat. It sounds like you're putting the people into the tanks instead of the vegetables!" He glanced at them, looking puzzled. "See if you two can make anything of this. It sounds medical to me."
Pat leaned back and smiled, sipping a glass of hydroponic burgundy.
"Wonderful stuff. You'll have to show us how to make it."
Len turned back to him. "You people live off the country, right? You hunt and bring in steaks and eat them, right? Well, say I have one of those steaks right here and I want to eat it, what happens?"
"Go ahead and eat it. It just wouldn't digest. You'd stay hungry."
"Why?" Len was aggrieved.
"Chemical differences in the basic protoplasm of Minos. Different amino linkages, left-handed instead of right-handed molecules in the carbohydrates, things like that. Nothing will be digestible here until you are adapted chemically by a little test-tube evolution. Till then you'd starve to death on a full stomach."
Pat's side of the table had been loaded with the dishes from two trays, but it was almost clear now and the dishes were stacked neatly to one side. He started on three desserts, thoughtfully tasting each in turn.
"Test-tube evolution?" Max repeated. "What's that? I thought you people had no doctors."
"It's a story." Pat leaned back again. "Alexander P. Mead, the head of the Mead clan, was a plant geneticist, a very determined personality and no man to argue with. He didn't want us to go through the struggle of killing off all Minos plants and putting in our own, spoiling the face of the planet and upsetting the balance of its ecology. He decided that he would adapt our genes to this planet or kill us trying. He did it all right.'"
"Did which?" asked June, suddenly feeling a sourceless prickle of fear.
"Adapted us to Minos. He took human cells—"
She listened intently, trying to find a reason for fear in the explanation. It would have taken many human generations to adapt to Minos by ordinary evolution, and that only at a heavy toll of death and hunger which evolution exacts. There was a shorter way: Human cells have the ability to return to their primeval condition of independence, hunting, eating and reproducing alone.
Alexander P. Mead took human cells and made them into phagocytes. He put them through the hard savage school of evolution—a thousand generations of multiplication, hardship and hunger, with the alien indigestible food always present, offering its reward of plenty to the cell that reluctantly learned to absorb it.
"Leucocytes can run through several thousand generations of evolution in six months," Pat Mead finished. "When they reached to a point where they would absorb Minos food, he planted them back in the people he had taken them from."
"What was supposed to happen then?" Max asked, leaning forward.
"I don't know exactly how it worked. He never told anybody much about it, and when I was a little boy he had gone loco and was wandering ha-ha-ing around waving a test tube. Fell down a ravine and broke his neck at the age of eighty."
"A character," Max said.
Why was she afraid? "It worked then?"
"Yes. He tried it on all the Meads the first year. The other settlers didn't want to be experimented on until they saw how it worked out. It worked. The Meads could hunt, and plant while the other settlers were still eating out of hydroponics tanks."
"It worked," said Max to Len. "You're a plant geneticist and a tank culture expert. There's a job for you."
"Uh- uh !" Len backed away. "It sounds like a medical problem to me. Human cell control—right up your alley."
"It is a one-way street," Pat warned. "Once it is done, you won't be able to digest ship food. I'll get no good from this protein. I ate it just for the taste."
Hal Barton appeared quietly beside the table. "Three of the twelve test hamsters have died," he reported, and turned to Pat. "Your people carry the germs of melting sickness, as you call it. The dead hamsters were injected with blood taken from you before you were de-infected. We can't settle here unless we de-infect everybody on Minos. Would they object?"
"We wouldn't want to give you folks germs," Pat smiled. "Anything for safety. But there'll have to be a vote on it first."
The doctors went to Reno Ulrich's table and walked with him to the hangar, explaining. He was to carry the proposal to Alexandria, mingle with the people, be persuasive and wait for them to vote before returning. He was to give himself shots of cureall every two hours on the hour or run the risk of disease.
Reno was pleased. He had dabbled in sociology before retraining as a mechanic for the expedition. "This gives me a chance to study their mores." He winked wickedly. "I may not be back for several nights." They watched through the viewplate as he took off, and then went over to the laboratory for a look at the hamsters.
Three were alive and healthy, munching lettuce. One was the control; the other two had been given shots of Pat's blood from before he entered the ship, but with no additional treatment. Apparently a hamster could fight off melting sickness easily if left alone. Three were still feverish and ruffled, with a low red blood count, but recovering. The three dead ones had been given strong shots of adaptive and counter histamine, so their bodies had not fought back against the attack.
June glanced at the dead animals hastily and looked away again. They lay twisted with a strange semi-fluid limpness, as if ready to dissolve. The last hamster, which had been given the heaviest dose of adaptive, had apparently lost all its hair before death. It was hairless and pink, like a still-born baby.
"We can find no micro-organisms," George Barton said. "None at all. Nothing in the body that should not be there. Leucosis and anemia. Fever only for the ones that fought it off." He handed Max some temperature charts and graphs of blood counts.
June wandered out into the hall. Pediatrics and obstetrics were her field; she left the cellular research to Max, and just helped him with laboratory routine. The strange mood followed her out into the hall, then abruptly lightened.
Coming toward her, busily telling a tale of adventure to the gorgeous Shelia Davenport, was a tall, red-headed, magnificently handsome man. It was his handsomeness which made Pat such a pleasure to look upon and talk with, she guiltily told herself, and it was his tremendous vitality.... It was like meeting a movie hero in the flesh, or a hero out of the pages of a book—Deer-slayer, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.
She waited in the doorway to the laboratory and made no move to join them, merely acknowledged the two with a nod and a smile and a casual lift of the hand. They nodded and smiled back.
"Hello, June," said Pat and continued telling his tale, but as they passed he lightly touched her arm.
"Oh, pioneer!" she said mockingly and softly to his passing profile, and knew that he had heard.
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What is the setting of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT by RAY BRADBURY.
Relevant chunks:
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
Question:
What is the setting of the story?
Answer:
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[
"The story begins at night when Sim is born. He and his family are inside of the cold cave. The cave had a thick fog in it that originally obscured his dad from view. The cave is where people on the planet spend most of their time. During the two hours of the day that they are able to venture out into the valley, they enjoy the beautiful scenery of greenery until they have to return to their cave tunnels. When the time is up, the sun returns and its rays scorch and kill everything in the valley. ",
"The story begins in a dark cave with a family within. The parents look old, the father threatens his newborn son with a knife, and the only thing the little boy and his sister do is eating. In the tunnel behind old people are dying. The planet is dangerous, it's extremely hot and the sun burns everything during the day, and the nights are cold with ice. Only at dawn and sunset the temperatures are normal and people can go outside. At these times the planet is beautiful and fruitful. When the sun appears or disappears the people hurry to the caves in the cliffs, otherwise, they die in a second outside. The temperature inside the caves is normal. There are metal pieces of seeds far away, most of the ships are broken, but one is known to be still functioning, though it's far away. ",
"The story takes place on an unknown planet near the sun. The planet has dangerous radiation and weather for the majority of the day, so much of the story is set inside a cave where humans seek refuge. The cave is barren and cold, made only of stone. At dawn and sunset, the people are able to go out into the valley, where plants grow, fruits bloom, rivers thaw, and animals roam. The few minutes of lush, natural life on the planet are cherished by the characters in the story, but they always return to the cave to avoid radiation.",
"The story is set on a planet that is practically uninhabitable. The nights burn with cold, and the days feel like torches of fire. Because of this, the people must live in caves to stay alive. When dawn and sunset come, however, the entire planet blossoms with life, the air becomes breath-sweet and flower-strong. The ice thaws, and the fires die off too. All of the animals come out as well to enjoy what little life they can. There are avalanches, too, mostly consisting of stones that have been biding their time. In Sim’s vision, there is a large metal spaceship just beyond the valley. He believes that it is the key to saving all of the people. When dawn comes, all of the plants flower, and pale green tendrils appear on rocks. There is also plenty of fruit to go around in that short time period. "
] |
63874
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THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT by RAY BRADBURY.
Relevant chunks:
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins with Sim being born in a cold cave. He’s wailing with tears while his mom feverishly feeds him. Even though he is a newborn, he interestingly has some self-awareness. Sim looked around the cave and spotted some old people dying in a graphic, grotesque manner. He raged in angst and his mom moved to soothe him. \n\nSuddenly, his father goes to attack him and his mother with a knife. His father wants to kill him as he reasons that there is no reason to live. Sim’s mother begs him not to and tells him to have faith that their son might live longer. After this altercation, Sim notices his sister, Dark, for the first time. Afterwards, he notices that his mother goes through a painful process of aging. Sim cannot seem to find anywhere to look in the cave that is not horrifying to look at and cries himself at these revelations. \n\nBecause the people on this planet age incredibly fast, Sim goes through a lot of understanding and self-thought during the first day of his life. Eventually, the next day arrives. As an avalanche falls into the valley, Sim’s father takes him and they both jump into the avalanche and are carried by it into the valley. Sim and his family enjoy the valley during the time that it is livable to play within its borders. During this time, Sim’s mother and father become upset as there is a pressing realization that they both will die soon. They all hurriedly return back to their cave as the sun is coming out and would kill them if they are caught in its rays. A young child is caught in the sun’s rays and burned to death. \n\nUpon their return, Sim’s mother and father toast icicles to signify their last day. Throughout the day, Sim continues to grow and gain more intelligence. His mother feeds him and lovingly embraces him. Upon their mother’s instruction, Dark takes Sim out into the valley and watches over him. While they are in the valley, the two parents die from old age. In the valley, Sim wonders why no one else asks about the metal seed in the distance that he sees. He thinks it is a potential escape plan. \n\nWhile outside, Sim observes meaning screaming a war rallying cry. When he finds a red berry, a boy named Chion goes and steals it from Sim. Dark slaps the boy and scolds him for stealing the berry. Sim thinks to himself about how he does not understand the fighting nature people have when life is already so short. He then threatens Chion and acknowledges the boy as his new enemy. Dark gives him advice about enemies and friends, how quick they can be made. However, Sim gets distracted with lustful thoughts about a girl that passes him. Dark mentions that she is concerned for his future as he will have to fight Chion. They then both run back to the caves. \n",
"Sim is just born in a cave, which is a nightmare. His mother feeds him and he grows larger and larger. There is a scary man in the farther corner of the cave, Sim's father with eyes being the only alive things on his face. Behind, the old people are sitting in the tunnel and dying. The father heads towards Sim with a knife to kill the child as there is nothing for him to live for. The mother disagrees and takes the weapon away. Sim's sister, Dark, is eating in the same room. The mother is also aging and dying. Sim understands everything though he is just one hour old and he is terrified. On the planet the days are flame, and the nights are ice, with dawn and sunset being the only bearable time to go outside. For that reason people live on the cliffs and they are about to die. Sim is about to live only eight days and all without sleep. Every age passes by really fast and people get old in days on the horrible planet. Ten thousand days ago metal seeds crashed on this planet bringing the people here, who rushed to hide in the cliffs and grew old in days. The only usable ship after the crash is still beyond the valley of cliffs, with some scientists working in it. Sim is determined to go there when he grows old and wise enough. At dawn, Sim's father takes him outside, leaps out during an avalanche and makes it alive. Fruits appear and as Sim eats, he rapidly gets knowledge. The mother cries for the transiency of time and wants to take the last look at everything, as they will die soon. The sun is rising but she is not afraid to be caught by it. Everyone rushes to the hideouts, including the family, but someone's child doesn't make it and is burnt. Sim glimpses the metal ship, his dream. Sim's parents are too feeble and send Dark to play with Sim at sunset, while they die. At dawn a funeral procession takes place for all dead during the night. Sim already can walk along. Dark and Sim discuss what they know when some people run to fight others. The kids are surprised as life is too short to fight. A boy, Chion, fights Sim for a berry. Sim understands what enemies and friends are, and the boy promises to kill him the next day. Dark explains how those are made and says that people around believe they can earn another day of life by killing the other. Suddenly, Sim notices and touches a girl, who he knows will become his wife tomorrow and they will be buried together. The girl introduces herself as Lyte, and along with Sim, Chion promises to remember the name. Dark tells Sim he needs weapons to fight for Lyte.",
"The story opens with Sim being born in a cave. He immediately is aware of feelings and sensations and is introduced to the dreadful world his family lives in. Sim is fed fruits and grass by his mother as he grows larger, and he sees the others in the cave begin to die. As Sim's mother holds him, his father suddenly takes him and holds a knife to him, planning to kill him. Sim's mother pleads as his father wonders what he has to live for. Sim sees his sister, Dark, beside him, and his mother manages to grab the knife from his father. Sim soon begins to understand, through racial memory, the conditions he lives in. He understands that the planet he is on, on which the people before him had crashed, casts deadly radiation on the planet which causes the people on it to live for only eight days. The land outside the cave is too dangerous and deadly during the days and nights; only when it is dawn or sunset do the valleys bloom with nature and the people can enjoy its short life. Sim begins to age rapidly, aware of the eight days he has to live, and desperate to find a solution. He has a vision of a spaceship on a far out mountain, intact but impossible to get to, where a group of scientists struggle to find a way home. Sim longs to get to the ship and prolong his life. As dawn approaches, the people in the cave get ready to head down to the valley, where the daily Avalanche occurs; Sim's father recklessly takes him through the avalanche, barely surviving. Sim watches the valley become flooded with life as he gains more knowledge and understanding. As dawn fades, Sim's parents acknowledge that it is their last day of living, and everyone bolts back into the cave, a child being left behind and scorched by the sun. Sim's parents make a toast on their last day of life, and he watches them age until they are unable to walk and struggle to speak, while Sim himself notices his growth and ability. At sunset, Sim's parents are no longer able to go outside, and Sim says his first word, \"Why\". The next day, Sim's parents pass, and Dark becomes his caretaker. They frolic in the valley after the funeral procession, where Sim sees a group of men engage in war and is perplexed. He is then knocked to the ground by a child named Chion, making his first enemy. Dark explains that enemies are inevitable, especially due to the superstition some believe about gaining more days of life by killing others. Sim then notices a girl named Lyte, who he takes a liking to and acknowledges as his future wife.",
"Sim is born during the night. His mother feeds him with feverish hands as he realizes that he has begun the nightmare of living. As the thick fog clears, he sees a man with a dying face begin to approach them. His mother is fearful, but she continues to feed him things such as ice-nipples, pebble-fruits, and valley-grass. As his father approaches, people sitting in the tunnel all die. His father raises the knife over him and plans to kill him, but his mother flings herself upon the back of his father. He wants to kill Sim’s sister too, but seeing his wife’s state makes him change his mind. Sim begins to understand that he is on a planet next to the sun, with cold nights and hot days. Most of the people bring their children out during dawn and sunset to play because these are the only times the climate is bearable. Sim knows that he has exactly eight days to live. Sim feels that it is unfair that he only has eight days to live before he dies and wonders how the people have gotten into this situation. He gets flashbacks of a crash that brought men and women to the planet; their bodies are altered so that they live and die in a week. He tries to think about what he can do to save them and suddenly gets another image of a deserted spaceship on a low mountain. His father wakes him up to announce that it is dawn, and the Avalanche comes. As people push towards the dawn, the rocks fall too. His father lifts him up, and they narrowly avoid being killed by one. Dark runs ahead, and Sim wonders why there is laughing. Suddenly, he sees plants come to life and fruit begin to sprout, giving him new knowledge. His parents discuss how this is the last time they will see these sights again; the sun begins to rise again, and they all leave. Sim watches a young child running in the flatness, but the child dies before he makes it. His parents toast one last time, and Sim watches them age rapidly from one stage to another. Before dying, his mother tells Dark to take care of him. Sim speaks for the first time as his parents die. On the second day, there is a funeral procession for the people who have died the previous night. Dark and Sim go outside to see fifty young men go to war, which makes him bewildered as to why people fight when their lives are already so short. A small boy attacks him, and he introduces himself as Chion. Sim realizes that this is his enemy as Chion says that he will be big enough to kill him tomorrow. He sees his future wife named Lyte, and it seems that Chion is interested as well. Dark tells him to eat so he will be strong enough to fight. "
] |
63874
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THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
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What is strange about the planet?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT by RAY BRADBURY.
Relevant chunks:
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
Question:
What is strange about the planet?
Answer:
|
[
"The planet is strange because of its extremes. The people that live on the planet have to spend most of their time in the caves because during most of the day the sun is too powerful and kills everything that it touches. At night, there is a cold, burning sensation. There are about two hours during the day, dawn and sunset, where the people are able to venture into the valley. During this time, the rivers flow, the flowers bloom, and the people enjoy the livable temperatures outside. Even more strange on the planet is the extreme aging that people go through. People only live 8 days. As a result, they mature, understand, grow, and age at an incredible pace. ",
"The planet is unadapted for humans. Originally, there were no humans on it, but their ships crushed there, so they can't escape. The sun on the planet is so hot during the day that it causes flames, so every plant is burnt in a second. During the night everything is icy and the temperature are so low, that they make everything freeze in a second. Dawn and sunset are the only times when people can go outside, at these times the planet is beautiful, full of fruits and plants. The caves are the only places for escape as the temperatures there are normal. People grow really fast and the life-time is eight days. In hours children learn to speak, to walk and to understand various concepts. The knowledge is gained through food. ",
"The planet is located very close to the sun. Because of this, the land is scorching hot during the day, making it impossible to be outside without being burned alive. The nights, however, are extremely cold, only permitting dawn and sunset for humans to be outdoors. Humans, having to adapt to the strange conditions of the planet, reside in the caves to hide from the climate, and their bodies were adjusted due to the radiation on the planet. The planet causes every human to grow rapidly and live for only eight days.",
"The planet causes people to age much faster than normal. From his vision, Sim sees the people drenched in solar radiation, which causes their pulses to quicken to a thousand beats per minute. Their blood changes too, and old age comes very quickly. Instead of a normal human lifespan, these people all live and die within a week while being forced to hide in caves. Another strange thing about the planet is its weather. There are only two hours of the day where life can function as normal, and everything must go into hiding for the rest of the time. Even the plant life cannot sustain itself, being burned away or frozen whenever dawn and dusk are over. "
] |
63874
|
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
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How does Sim gain his knowledge and absorb his surroundings?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT by RAY BRADBURY.
Relevant chunks:
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
Question:
How does Sim gain his knowledge and absorb his surroundings?
Answer:
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[
"During his first day, Sim knows no words and has not yet spoken. Yet, he gains a lot of knowledge from images, old memories, and a telepathic type of awareness that seems to penetrate everything. He observes much of his surroundings and is upset by his analysis of the horror that occurs every day on the planet. On the second day of his existence, Sim readily and eagerly acquires more knowledge about social customs and how his society worked. ",
"Children on the planet are constantly eating as food is the source of knowledge. People grow every minute and the length of life is eight days. Sim gains initial knowledge while he is in the womb. When he can't even move, he already understands basic concepts like family, danger, etc. Every minute he gains some new knowledge. He says his first word in a day. He walks the next morning. He starts talking to his sister and she shares her knowledge as she is older. He makes friends and enemies the next day and fall in love. People are constantly dying before him. He sees the ship and dreams to reach it and escape. ",
"Despite Sim's young age, he is quickly conscious of the images around him, as soon as an hour after he is born. He is able to recognize his mother and father, and he soon watches as people in the cave die around him. Sim quickly grows accustomed to the concept of death and picks up on the idea that people only live for eight days. He learns by observing the people around him, watching as they go outside at certain parts of the day. Sim is also able to understand things through inherited memory, which allows him to comprehend ideas such as life. He learns to understand emotions such as love through his relationship with his family, and after his parents die, his sister Dark acts as his mentor.",
"Sim gains knowledge as the days go by. The moment he is born, he begins to start learning about the world around him. Since humans only live for eight days, he is able to learn how to walk only one to two days after his birth. Despite being a baby for the first part of the story, he already has very intricate thoughts about wanting to live longer and how it is not fair that all the people will die so fast. When his parents take Dark and him out, his senses are honed, and he begins storing knowledge intensely. Sim begins to understand love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings, subtleties, realities, and reflections. Because of the lack of time, his mind seeks and interprets material on its own instead of having to wait for somebody to teach it new concepts. Just as his parents die, he learns how to speak. All of these changes seem to be the process of his short life. \n"
] |
63874
|
THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT
By RAY BRADBURY
Mad, impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night—and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship—if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant—the limit of life itself!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
During the night, Sim was born. He lay wailing upon the cold cave stones. His blood beat through him a thousand pulses each minute. He grew, steadily.
Into his mouth his mother with feverish hands put the food. The nightmare of living was begun. Almost instantly at birth his eyes grew alert, and then, without half understanding why, filled with bright, insistent terror. He gagged upon the food, choked and wailed. He looked about, blindly.
There was a thick fog. It cleared. The outlines of the cave appeared. And a man loomed up, insane and wild and terrible. A man with a dying face. Old, withered by winds, baked like adobe in the heat. The man was crouched in a far corner of the cave, his eyes whitening to one side of his face, listening to the far wind trumpeting up above on the frozen night planet.
Sim's mother, trembling, now and again, staring at the man, fed Sim pebble-fruits, valley-grasses and ice-nipples broken from the cavern entrances, and eating, eliminating, eating again, he grew larger, larger.
The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were all that was alive in his face. He held a crude stone dagger in his withered hands and his jaw hung loose and senseless.
Then, with a widening focus, Sim saw the old people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living quarter. And as he watched, they began to die.
Their agonies filled the cave. They melted like waxen images, their faces collapsed inward on their sharp bones, their teeth protruded. One minute their faces were mature, fairly smooth, alive, electric. The next minute a desication and burning away of their flesh occurred.
Sim thrashed in his mother's grasp. She held him. "No, no," she soothed him, quietly, earnestly, looking to see if this, too, would cause her husband to rise again.
With a soft swift padding of naked feet, Sim's father ran across the cave. Sim's mother screamed. Sim felt himself torn loose from her grasp. He fell upon the stones, rolling, shrieking with his new, moist lungs!
With a soft padding of naked feet Sim's father ran across the cave.
The webbed face of his father jerked over him, the knife was poised. It was like one of those prenatal nightmares he'd had while still in his mother's flesh. In the next few blazing, impossible instants questions flicked through his brain. The knife was high, suspended, ready to destroy him. But the whole question of life in this cave, the dying people, the withering and the insanity, surged through Sim's new, small head. How was it that he understood? A newborn child? Can a newborn child think, see, understand, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive an hour now. And in the next instant perhaps dead!
His mother flung herself upon the back of his father, and beat down the weapon. Sim caught the terrific backwash of emotion from both their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing harshly, sobbingly. "What has he to live for?"
"No, no!" insisted the mother, and her body, frail and old as it was, stretched across the huge body of the father, tearing at his weapon.
"He must live! There may be a future for him! He may live longer than us, and be young!"
The father fell back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes glittering, Sim saw another figure inside that stone crib. A girl-child, quietly feeding itself, moving its delicate hands to procure food. His sister.
The mother wrenched the dagger from her husband's grasp, stood up, weeping and pushing back her cloud of stiffening gray hair. Her mouth trembled and jerked. "I'll kill you!" she said, glaring down at her husband. "Leave my children alone."
The old man spat tiredly, bitterly, and looked vacantly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life's over, already," he gasped. "And she doesn't know it. What's the use?"
As Sim watched, his own mother seemed to shift and take a tortured, smoke-like form. The thin bony face broke out into a maze of wrinkles. She was shaken with pain and had to sit by him, shuddering and cuddling the knife to her shriveled breasts. She, like the old people in the tunnel, was aging, dying.
Sim cried steadily. Everywhere he looked was horror. A mind came to meet his own. Instinctively he glanced toward the stone crib. Dark, his sister, returned his glance. Their minds brushed like straying fingers. He relaxed somewhat. He began to learn.
The father sighed, shut his lids down over his green eyes. "Feed the child," he said, exhaustedly. "Hurry. It is almost dawn and it is our last day of living, woman. Feed him. Make him grow."
Sim quieted, and images, out of the terror, floated to him.
This was a planet next to the sun. The nights burned with cold, the days were like torches of fire. It was a violent, impossible world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the incredible ice and the day of flame. Only at dawn and sunset was the air breath-sweet, flower-strong, and then the cave peoples brought their children out into a stony, barren valley. At dawn the ice thawed into creeks and rivers, at sunset the day-fires died and cooled. In the intervals of even, livable temperature the people lived, ran, played, loved, free of the caverns; all life on the planet jumped, burst into life. Plants grew instantly, birds were flung like pellets across the sky. Smaller, legged animal life rushed frantically through the rocks; everything tried to get its living down in the brief hour of respite.
It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this, a matter of hours after birth. Racial memory bloomed in him. He would live his entire life in the caves, with two hours a day outside. Here, in stone channels of air he would talk, talk incessantly with his people, sleep never, think, think and lie upon his back, dreaming; but never sleeping.
And he would live exactly eight days.
The violence of this thought evacuated his bowels. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, impossible, but a fact. Even while in his mother's flesh some racial knowledge had told him he was being formed rapidly, shaped and propelled out swiftly.
Birth was quick as a knife. Childhood was over in a flash. Adolescence was a sheet of lightning. Manhood was a dream, maturity a myth, old age an inescapably quick reality, death a swift certainty.
Eight days from now he'd stand half-blind, withering, dying, as his father now stood, staring uselessly at his own wife and child.
This day was an eighth part of his total life! He must enjoy every second of it. He must search his parents' thoughts for knowledge.
Because in a few hours they'd be dead.
This was so impossibly unfair. Was this all of life? In his prenatal state hadn't he dreamed of long lives, valleys not of blasted stone but green foliage and temperate clime? Yes! And if he'd dreamed then there must be truth in the visions. How could he seek and find the long life? Where? And how could he accomplish a life mission that huge and depressing in eight short, vanishing days?
How had his people gotten into such a condition?
As if at a button pressed, he saw an image. Metal seeds, blown across space from a distant green world, fighting with long flames, crashing on this bleak planet. From their shattered hulls tumble men and women.
When? Long ago. Ten thousand days. The crash victims hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice and floods washed away the wreckage of the huge metal seeds. The victims were shaped and beaten like iron upon a forge. Solar radiations drenched them. Their pulses quickened, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats a minute. Their skins thickened, their blood changed. Old age came rushing. Children were born in the caves. Swifter, swifter, swifter the process. Like all this world's wild life, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do likewise.
So this is life, thought Sim. It was not spoken in his mind, for he knew no words, he knew only images, old memory, an awareness, a telepathy that could penetrate flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of futile sons? What can I do to save myself from dying eight days from now? Is there escape?
His eyes widened, another image came to focus.
Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain lay a perfect, unscarred metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or touched by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship of all these that had crashed that was still a unit, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one in it to help. This ship, then, on the far mountain, was the destiny toward which he would grow. There was his only hope of escape.
His mind flexed.
In this cliff, deep down in a confinement of solitude, worked a handful of scientists. To these men, when he was old enough and wise enough, he must go. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long life, of green valleys and temperate weathers. They, too, stared longingly at that distant ship upon its high mountain, its metal so perfect it did not rust or age.
The cliff groaned.
Sim's father lifted his eroded, lifeless face.
"Dawn's coming," he said.
II
Morning relaxed the mighty granite cliff muscles. It was the time of the Avalanche.
The tunnels echoed to running bare feet. Adults, children pushed with eager, hungry eyes toward the outside dawn. From far out, Sim heard a rumble of rock, a scream, a silence. Avalanches fell into valley. Stones that had been biding their time, not quite ready to fall, for a million years let go their bulks, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders they smashed upon the valley floor in a thousand shrapnels and friction-heated nuggets.
Every morning at least one person was caught in the downpour.
The cliff people dared the avalanches. It added one more excitement to their lives, already too short, too headlong, too dangerous.
Sim felt himself seized up by his father. He was carried brusquely down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight appeared. There was a shining insane light in his father's eyes. Sim could not move. He sensed what was going to happen. Behind his father, his mother hurried, bringing with her the little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she cried to her husband.
Sim felt his father crouch, listening.
High in the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.
"Now!" bellowed his father, and leaped out.
An avalanche fell down at them!
Sim had accelerated impressions of plunging walls, dust, confusion. His mother screamed! There was a jolting, a plunging.
With one last step, Sim's father hurried him forward into the day. The avalanche thundered behind him. The mouth of the cave, where mother and Dark stood back out of the way, was choked with rubble and two boulders that weighed a hundred pounds each.
The storm thunder of the avalanche passed away to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out into laughter. "Made it! By the Gods! Made it alive!" And he looked scornfully at the cliff and spat. "Pagh!"
Mother and sister Dark struggled through the rubble. She cursed her husband. "Fool! You might have killed Sim!"
"I may yet," retorted the father.
Sim was not listening. He was fascinated with the remains of an avalanche afront of the next tunnel. A blood stain trickled out from under a rise of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else to be seen. Someone else had lost the game.
Dark ran ahead on lithe, supple feet, naked and certain.
The valley air was like a wine filtered between mountains. The heaven was a restive blue; not the pale scorched atmosphere of full day, nor the bloated, bruised black-purple of night, a-riot with sickly shining stars.
This was a tide pool. A place where waves of varying and violent temperatures struck, receded. Now the tide pool was quiet, cool, and its life moved abroad.
Laughter! Far away, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people find time for laughing? Perhaps later he would discover why.
The valley suddenly blushed with impulsive color. Plant-life, thawing in the precipitant dawn, shoved out from most unexpected sources. It flowered as you watched. Pale green tendrils appeared on scoured rocks. Seconds later, ripe globes of fruit twitched upon the blade-tips. Father gave Sim over to mother and harvested the momentary, volatile crop, thrust scarlet, blue, yellow fruits into a fur sack which hung at his waist. Mother tugged at the moist new grasses, laid them on Sim's tongue.
His senses were being honed to a fine edge. He stored knowledge thirstily. He understood love, marriage, customs, anger, pity, rage, selfishness, shadings and subtleties, realities and reflections. One thing suggested another. The sight of green plant life whirled his mind like a gyroscope, seeking balance in a world where lack of time for explanations made a mind seek and interpret on its own. The soft burden of food gave him knowledge of his system, of energy, of movement. Like a bird newly cracking its way from a shell, he was almost a unit, complete, all-knowing. Heredity had done all this for him. He grew excited with his ability.
They walked, mother, father and the two children, smelling the smells, watching the birds bounce from wall to wall of the valley like scurrying pebbles and suddenly the father said a strange thing:
"Remember?"
Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they'd lived only seven days!
The husband and wife looked at each other.
"Was it only three days ago?" said the woman, her body shaking, her eyes closing to think. "I can't believe it. It is so unfair." She sobbed, then drew her hand across her face and bit her parched lips. The wind played at her gray hair. "Now is my turn to cry. An hour ago it was you!"
"An hour is half a life."
"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let us look at everything, because it will be our last looking."
"The sun'll be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We must turn back now."
"Just one more moment," pleaded the woman.
"The sun will catch us."
"Let it catch me then!"
"You don't mean that."
"I mean nothing, nothing at all," cried the woman.
The sun was coming fast. The green in the valley burnt away. Searing wind blasted from over the cliffs. Far away where sun bolts hammered battlements of cliff, the huge stone faces shook their contents; those avalanches not already powdered down, were now released and fell like mantles.
"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl sprang over the warm floor of the valley, answering, her hair a black flag behind her. Hands full of green fruits, she joined them.
The sun rimmed the horizon with flame, the air convulsed dangerously with it, and whistled.
The cave people bolted, shouting, picking up their fallen children, bearing vast loads of fruit and grass with them back to their deep hideouts. In moments the valley was bare. Except for one small child someone had forgotten. He was running far out on the flatness, but he was not strong enough, and the engulfing heat was drifting down from the cliffs even as he was half across the valley.
Flowers were burnt into effigies, grasses sucked back into rocks like singed snakes, flower seeds whirled and fell in the sudden furnace blast of wind, sown far into gullies and crannies, ready to blossom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.
Sim's father watched that child running, alone, out on the floor of the valley. He and his wife and Dark and Sim were safe in the mouth of their tunnel.
"He'll never make it," said father. "Do not watch him, woman. It's not a good thing to watch."
They turned away. All except Sim, whose eyes had caught a glint of metal far away. His heart hammered in him, and his eyes blurred. Far away, atop a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a dazzling ripple of light! It was like one of his intra-embryo dreams fulfilled! A metal space seed, intact, undamaged, lying on a mountain! There was his future! There was his hope for survival! There was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strange thought—a grown man!
The sun plunged into the valley like molten lava.
The little running child screamed, the sun burned, and the screaming stopped.
Sim's mother walked painfully, with sudden age, down the tunnel, paused, reached up, broke off two last icicles that had formed during the night. She handed one to her husband, kept the other. "We will drink one last toast. To you, to the children."
"To you ," he nodded to her. "To the children." They lifted the icicles. The warmth melted the ice down into their thirsty mouths.
All day the sun seemed to blaze and erupt into the valley. Sim could not see it, but the vivid pictorials in his parents' minds were sufficient evidence of the nature of the day fire. The light ran like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, poking inward, but never penetrating deeply enough. It lighted the caves. It made the hollows of the cliff comfortably warm.
Sim fought to keep his parents young. But no matter how hard he fought with mind and image, they became like mummies before him. His father seemed to dissolve from one stage of oldness to another. This is what will happen to me soon, though Sim in terror.
Sim grew upon himself. He felt the digestive-eliminatory movements of his body. He was fed every minute, he was continually swallowing, feeding. He began to fit words to images and processes. Such a word was love. It was not an abstraction, but a process, a stir of breath, a smell of morning air, a flutter of heart, the curve of arm holding him, the look in the suspended face of his mother. He saw the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and there was the word, in her brain, ready to use. His throat prepared to speak. Life was pushing him, rushing him along toward oblivion.
He sensed the expansion of his fingernails, the adjustments of his cells, the profusion of his hair, the multiplication of his bones and sinew, the grooving of the soft pale wax of his brain. His brain at birth as clear as a circle of ice, innocent, unmarked, was, an instant later, as if hit with a thrown rock, cracked and marked and patterned in a million crevices of thought and discovery.
His sister, Dark, ran in and out with other little hothouse children, forever eating. His mother trembled over him, not eating, she had no appetite, her eyes were webbed shut.
"Sunset," said his father, at last.
The day was over. The light faded, a wind sounded.
His mother arose. "I want to see the outside world once more ... just once more...." She stared blindly, shivering.
His father's eyes were shut, he lay against the wall.
"I cannot rise," he whispered faintly. "I cannot."
"Dark!" The mother croaked, the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold to Sim, Dark, feed him, care for him." She gave Sim one last fondling touch.
Dark said not a word, holding Sim, her great green eyes shining wetly.
"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out into the sunset time. Enjoy yourselves. Pick foods, eat. Play."
Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grasp, looking over her shoulder with unbelieving, tragic eyes. He cried out and somehow summoned from his lips the first word of his existence.
"Why...?"
He saw his mother stiffen. "The child spoke!"
"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"
"I heard," said the mother quietly.
The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swayingly, slowly moving across the floor to lie beside her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.
IV
The night came and passed and then started the second day.
The bodies of all those who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession to the top of a small hill. The procession was long, the bodies numerous.
Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Only an hour before dawn Sim had learned to walk.
At the top of the hill, Sim saw once again the far off metal seed. Nobody ever looked at it, or spoke of it. Why? Was there some reason? Was it a mirage? Why did they not run toward it? Worship it? Try to get to it and fly away into space?
The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were placed upon the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would cremate them.
The procession then turned and ran down the hill, eager to have their few minutes of free time running and playing and laughing in the sweet air.
Dark and Sim, chattering like birds, feeding among the rocks, exchanged what they knew of life. He was in his second day, she in her third. They were driven, as always, by the mercurial speed of their lives.
Another piece of his life opened wide.
Fifty young men ran down from the cliffs, holding sharp stones and rock daggers in their thick hands. Shouting, they ran off toward distant black, low lines of small rock cliffs.
"War!"
The thought stood in Sim's brain. It shocked and beat at him. These men were running to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.
But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting, killing?
From a great distance he heard the sound of conflict, and it made his stomach cold. "Why, Dark, why?"
Dark didn't know. Perhaps they would understand tomorrow. Now, there was the business of eating to sustain and support their lives. Watching Dark was like seeing a lizard forever flickering its pink tongue, forever hungry.
Pale children ran on all sides of them. One beetle-like boy scuttled up the rocks, knocking Sim aside, to take from him a particularly luscious red berry he had found growing under an outcrop.
The child ate hastily of the fruit before Sim could gain his feet. Then Sim hurled himself unsteadily, the two of them fell in a ridiculous jumble, rolling, until Dark pried them, squalling, apart.
Sim bled. A part of him stood off, like a god, and said, "This should not be. Children should not be this way. It is wrong!"
Dark slapped the little intruding boy away. "Get on!" she cried.
"What's your name, bad one?"
"Chion!" laughed the boy. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"
Sim glared at him with all the ferocity in his small, unskilled features. He choked. This was his enemy. It was as if he'd waited for an enemy of person as well as scene. He had already understood the avalanches, the heat, the cold, the shortness of life, but these were things of places, of scene—mute, extravagant manifestations of unthinking nature, not motivated save by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this stridulent Chion he recognized a thinking enemy!
Chion darted off, turned at a distance, tauntingly crying:
"Tomorrow I will be big enough to kill you!"
And he vanished around a rock.
More children ran, giggling, by Sim. Which of them would be friends, enemies? How could friends and enemies come about in this impossible, quick life time? There was no time to make either, was there?
Dark, as if knowing his thoughts, drew him away. As they searched for desired foods, she whispered fiercely in his ear. "Enemies are made over things like stolen foods; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies come, too, from opinions and thoughts. In five seconds you've made an enemy for life. Life's so short enemies must be made quickly." And she laughed with an irony strange for one so young, who was growing older before her rightful time. "You must fight to protect yourself. Others, superstitious ones, will try killing you. There is a belief, a ridiculous belief, that if one kills another, the murderer partakes of the life energy of the slain, and therefore will live an extra day. You see? As long as that is believed, you're in danger."
But Sim was not listening. Bursting from a flock of delicate girls who tomorrow would be tall, quieter, and who day after that would gain breasts and the next day take husbands, Sim caught sight of one small girl whose hair was a violet blue flame.
She ran past, brushed Sim, their bodies touched. Her eyes, white as silver coins, shone at him. He knew then that he'd found a friend, a love, a wife, one who'd a week from now lie with him atop the funeral pyre as sunlight undressed their flesh from bone.
Only the glance, but it held them in mid-motion, one instant.
"Your name?" he shouted after her.
"Lyte!" she called laughingly back.
"I'm Sim," he answered, confused and bewildered.
"Sim!" she repeated it, flashing on. "I'll remember!"
Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat ," she said to the distracted boy.
"Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."
From nowhere, Chion appeared, running by. "Lyte!" he mocked, dancing malevolently along and away. "Lyte! I'll remember Lyte, too!"
Dark stood tall and reed slender, shaking her dark ebony clouds of hair, sadly. "I see your life before you, little Sim. You'll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"
They ran back to the caves.
|
What is the significance of the old man in the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Home is Where You Left It by Stephen Marlowe.
Relevant chunks:
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
Question:
What is the significance of the old man in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"When Steve arrives at the Colony, he sees deserted buildings and realizes that the well water is poisoned. The old man - the Kumaji who lived with the humans - tells him that the day before, three people died from the poisoned drinking water. The Kumaji are behind this and are trying to locate the others who left the Colony. They want to find the caravan, and even though the desert wind will wipe out the humans' trail, they still need to be informed about this danger. Knowing all of this allows Steve to find the caravan and eventually save them from the Kumaji, who could learn their location from Tobias Whiting. ",
"\nThe old man serves as a guide for Steve in the story. Initially, he is the one who tells him about the colonists leaving because of the poisoned water. He also explains that the Kumaji are out to get them and that the colonists are desperate to get to Oasis City. His words also give Steve the motivation to go and help his people, despite being away for so long on Earth. Furthermore, the old man is also proof that Kumaji and humans can live together. Although he is a Kumaji, he has lived with humans and can speak perfect English. He does not hold any malice and even says that this is the only home he has ever had. Therefore, he will not leave this place and wishes Steve good luck to helping his people. ",
"The old man plays the role of the messenger. He has a strong role in the beginning of the story and sets up young Steve Cantwell with the background of what happened to the colony, as well as driving him with the mission of catching up to the travelling colony in order to warn them of the pursuing Kumajis. \n\nHe is significant because the old man, by face, is a Kumaji. Despite this, he has lived with the Earth colony and is insistent on dying in the village, which he proclaims as his town. This hints at the fact that Kumajis and the Earthmen could have actually cohabited peacefully, and even form strong bonds when their communities interacted and lived with each other. ",
"The old man is a very important figure in the plot. After Steve finds his village abandoned and dead, the old man is the only one who stayed behind. He is also revealed to be of the Kumaji species, but he has lived with the humans in the village for such a long time that he has no ties to them. He helps Steve figure out what happened, and tells him where the people went in order for Steve to find them. He ends up staying in the village, even though Steve offered to take him to the others. He did this because he was already dying, and wanted to die in his village. "
] |
32890
|
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
|
Describe the Setting of the story.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Home is Where You Left It by Stephen Marlowe.
Relevant chunks:
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
Question:
Describe the Setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story is set in the twenty-second century: the Earth government is seeking colonies in many places. One of them is on Sirius’ second planet. Steve spent his early childhood here in a human settlement in the middle of a desert, but he went to Earth to get an education. Now he got back to Oasis City, which is built at the confluence of two underground rivers and is 500 miles from his home Colony. At the beginning, Steve flies across the desert to his village: it looks abandoned. He walks from the well with water to his aunt’s house and soon finds the dying Kumaji. Later, Steve flies above the desert dunes and spots the caravan. He lands there and spends the next several days with the people walking east to Oasis City. Then Steve and Mary go to the north - to the Kumaji base. They surrender, and the Kumaji take them both to a small encampment. In a secular tent, they find Mary’s Father. When it’s dark, Mary and Steve sneak out of the tent and soon glide off across the sand on the thlot’s back. ",
"The village that Steve first visits is his childhood home. There is a strong desert heat in the area and many deserted mud-houses. All of the families draw their water from a single well, and there is also a community center too. Inside of his aunt’s house, there is a set table, a coffee pot on the stove, and the remains of last night’s partially-consumed dinner. Outside, there is only hot desert sand and haze from the heat. The colonists also have imported camels to help them as well. There are also many sandhills and a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. Many small, six-legged creatures glide across the desert. At the Kumaji encampment, there is a circular tent for the prisoners. ",
"This story is set in a desert on Sirius' second planet, where an Earth colony has taken residence. The colony's village is lined with deserted mud-brick houses, a community center, and a single well, with some of the houses damaged due to the Kumaji's raids. \n\nMost of the story takes place on the road, where the caravan journeys across the desert to reach Oasis City, 500 miles away. The Sirian desert had nothing but vast miles of dry sand and heat and the camels that the colonists brought. Occasionally, the characters in the story will come across a small spring for drinkable water. \n\nThe latter part of the story takes place in a Kumaji encampment, where the characters are imprisoned in a circular tent. ",
"The story takes place on a desert planet, which is inhabited by a native race. The planet is very arid, and it is described to have different villages and cities. The village in which Steve grew up in, has a large water well in the middle, which gets poisoned by the natives. After this, the humans are trying to reach a large city inhabited by more humans. This city is called Oasis City, and it is located between two rivers. The natives live in large camps, and ride animals called Thlots, which allows them to move quickly in the desert. \n\n"
] |
32890
|
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Home is Where You Left It by Stephen Marlowe.
Relevant chunks:
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Steve Cantwell grew up in a desert village on Sirius' second planet, he lived with his aunt. It is one of the human colonies, and it has never been accepted by the Kumaji tribesmen - the natives who have been raiding the settlements for years. Steve went to Earth to get an education, but now he came back to the planet. He flew from Oasis City to his native village on a unicopter only to find the deserted buildings and poisoned water. A Kumaji, who lived with the earthmen, tells him that the natives poisoned the well - three people died, and everybody else had to leave their home and walk to Oasis City through the desert wasteland. Now the Kumaji are looking for them to kill. The man stayed here to die since he’s too old to flee or fight. Steve gives him his water canteen and flies away to find the other citizens. Hours later, he spots a caravan with camels. He first meets Tobias Whiting, who was the most successful man in the village when Steve was a child. The man greets him coldly and soon informs Steve that his aunt was one of the people who died from the poisoned water. Then he introduces him to his daughter Mary, the young woman who charms Steve. Tobias says he had a profitable business, but all his money is gone now. Three days later, he disappears, taking Steve’s unicopter with him. The other members suppose that Tobias decided to trade the caravan’s location for his profits, thus betraying them. Mary and Steve take some food and head towards the Kumaji base to the north of the caravan since Tobias probably decided to fly there. Four days later, they spot the empty unicopter and realize that Tobias must’ve reached the base by now. They keep walking and soon surrender to the Kumajis, who put them in a circular tent where they meet Tobias. He explains to Mary that he wants to give her the life she deserves. Now he’s determined to tell the Kumaji everything since his daughter got captured, and the Kumaji might torture her for information. Steve devises an escape plan: at night, he makes Tobias scream for a second to make one of the guards come in. Steve kills this one Kumaji, but the guard manages to lethally wound Tobias while fighting with the attacker. Whiting blesses Mary and Steve and orders them to leave, promising that he’ll deceive the Kumaji and not share the true location of the caravan. The couple runs from the tent, and Steve kills several more guards before gliding off on the thlot’s - desert animal - back with Mary. They reach the caravan two days later and decide to tell everyone that Whiting initially went to the Kumaji to save everyone. Mary admits to Steve that she loves him.",
"Steve Cantwell reaches a village after coming in his unicopter from Oasis City. He thinks about his childhood memories as he walks around, sadly thinking about living in the mud-house with his aunt after his parents were killed in a Kumaji raid, and the community center. As he tries the water, he realizes it is poisoned and stuffs sand in his mouth. As he goes into his aunt’s house, an old Kumaji appears and tells him that everyone left. Steve thinks about the Kumaji raids from when he was a boy, and the old one talks about how the poisoned well was the last straw for the colonists to leave for Oasis City. Steve offers to take the old man with him in the unicopter, but he refuses and insists that the town is his home. Steve then goes to look for his people in the desert, and he finds them hiking through the desert. Steve goes to introduce himself again, but a man named Tobias Whiting only responds to him bitterly. He tells Steve that his aunt was one of the people who died, and his daughter Mary Whiting meets up with them later. Tobias Whiting complains about never having money because of the Kumaji, but Mary Whiting gives him a smile. Tobias disappears three days later, and he takes Steve’s unicopter on the fourth night to go and retrieve his fortune. Mary slaps Gort, but he asks Steve how far Tobias will get with the unicopter. They get captured by the Kumaji and see that Tobias is waiting for them at the camp. Mary asks her father why he did what he did, and Steve asks if he has told them the information yet. At night, Mary asks if Steve has gone to sleep yet. Tobias is clearly asleep, and Mary is furious about her father betraying their people. Steve threatens to kill Tobias, but he ends up killing a guard instead. Tobias, however, is injured by the pike and lays there in pain. He asks Mary if Steve is the person she wants, and he tells the two of them to go south with the rest of the Earthmen. Tobias reassures them that he will live long enough to deceive the Kumaji. Steve escapes with Mary, killing a few more of the Kumaji before taking off on the thlot. They ride off into the distance, letting the sand obstruct their trail. Steve promises that they will tell the rest of the colony that Mary’s father died as a hero, and she proclaims her love for him. The two of them know that they will reach Oasis City safely, and there is a new world out in space. ",
"This story follows Steve Cantwell, a young Earthmen who has returned from being educated on Earth back to his home in the Sirian desert. Upon arrival, he finds his village hastily abandoned - including his aunt - and the well poisoned. He finds an old Kumaji man in the community center, who informs him of what happened. The Kumaji tribesmen had raided the village as they felt the colony took up an oasis belonging to their own nomadic needs. By poisoning the well, the colonists were forced to travel by foot and camel across the arid desert to try and reach Oasis City, located 500 miles away. \n\nCantwell decides to hop into his unicopter to meet the travelling caravan and warn them of the Kumaji. He insists theres room for the old man, but the old man chooses to stay and die in his home. Reluctantly, Cantwell leaves the old man with the remaining water his in canteen. Later, Cantwell finds the caravan and reunites with familiar faces from his boyhood. This includes Tobias Whiting, previously the Colony's most successful man through his trading and business with the Kumajis, his daughter Mary, and some other childhood friends. Whiting describes how despite his relationship with the Kumajis and supposed riches, he and his daughter are forced to escape as refugees as well. \n\nDays after travelling with the caravan, Whiting disappears with Cantwell's unicopter. After discussing with some of the colony members, it is suggested that Whiting had gone off with the intention of trading with the Kumajis again: the colony's location in return for his money. Steve and Mary decide to follow and stop him. After a couple days travel, they find the unicopter crashed. Though initially reassured by the fact that Whiting was alive, they soon get spotted and captured by a band of Kumajis. Led to the Kumajis' encampment, they are met by Whiting. It seems that even if Whiting has changed his mind, the presence of his daughter and Cantwell could mean that the Kumajis were willing to torture the information of out Whiting regardless. \n\nAt night, Steve enacts a plan. He pretends to choke Whiting and draws the attention of the guard. They enter a scuffle, with the guard dying, but not without Whiting having taken a fatal stabbing from the guard's pike. Whiting vows instead to misinform the Kumajis on the caravan's location, and insists on the Steve getting Mary out safely. The pair manage to escape on a stolen thlotback and as they ride up to the caravan, plan to tell Whiting's demise as a hero. ",
"The story revolves around Steve Cantwell, a human raised on a desert planet who decides to return home after years away.. When he arrives at his village, he sees the whole village is deserted, and attacked. The water well is poisoned, and the only person that he can find is an old man that tells him what happened. After overpopulation on earth increased dramatically, many humans turned to other planets to colonize. This desert planet was an example of that. The humans who lived in this village had always had trouble with the native tribe, as they weren’t happy that the humans arrived at their home. This led to constant raids by the tribe, and is eventually what led to the humans abandoning the village to live in a city 500 miles away. After the old man told him what happened, Steve leaves in his ship to find the caravan of the surviving humans, as the old man wanted to stay in the village. After Steve finds them, he meets with people from the village, most of which remember him. Together, they continue their journey towards the large city and towards safety from the natives. One day, one of the men of the party takes Steve’s ship. It is assumed that he wanted to negotiate with the natives, as he had a lot of money with them. In return, the man would give them the location of the rest of the humans. Steve and the man’s daughter leave in order to find him and stop when. After getting captured by the natives, they meet with the man again, who wants to go ahead with his plan of betraying the rest of the humans. Steve understands that this can’t happen, so he lures a guard in and kills him. In the process, the man dies, but manages to go back on his plan and sends the natives to a wrong location. Steve and the daughter leave, excited to meet up with the others and start a new life in the city. "
] |
32890
|
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
|
Who is Tobias Whiting and what happens to him throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Home is Where You Left It by Stephen Marlowe.
Relevant chunks:
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
Question:
Who is Tobias Whiting and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Tobias is a well-muscled, handsome man in his mid-forties. He is the Colony’s official trader with the Kumajis. Steve believed him to have been the most successful man in the Colony before the events of the story. The water in his village gets poisoned by the Kumaji. He, together with his daughter and other citizens, is forced to abandon his home and walk through the desert to Oasis City, leaving all his treasures and assets behind. The Kumajis are trying to chase them and kill the Colony. At some point in their journey, he meets Steve, who found the caravan on his unicopter. Several days later, Tobias decides to steal the unicopter and fly to the Kumaji’s base fifty miles due north of their stop and trade the caravan’s location for his money. He’s kept in one of the tents, and soon Mary and Steve join him. Now that his daughter is a prisoner, he’s eager to share the location of the caravan and save her from torture. At night Steve whispers that he will kill Tobias, and the man screams. Steve quickly silences him and attacks the coming guard. The Kumaji loses the battle with Steve but stabs Tobias in the stomach. He realizes that he won’t be able to leave the camp alive, so he blesses Mary and Steve and promises to give the Kumaji the wrong direction and save the caravan.",
"Tobias Whiting is the father of Mary Whiting. He is described to be the colony’s most successful man when Steve was a boy. However, there is now bitterness, bleak self-pity, and defeat evident in his eyes. Physically, he is in his mid-forties now. He is well-muscled, flesh solid, and walks with bold steps. He also has a craggy and handsome face. Tobias used to be very rich, by the colony standards, because he primarily traded with the Kumajis. Now, he has lost all of his money to them. He deeply cares for his daughter Mary, taking good care of her when they have to flee with the rest of the colony. Tobias, however, decides to steal Steven’s unicopter to go back to the Kumaji under the guise of getting his fortune back. When they meet him at the camp, he tells them that he is discussing a settlement with the Kumaji. Later, Tobias is gravely injured by the pike of the guard after he is attacked by Steve. He still wishes nothing but for Mary’s happiness, so he tells Steve to take her south with the rest of the colony. He says that he will give the Kumaji false information to better help the colony escape. ",
"Tobias Whiting is a mid-fourties Earthman who belonged to the colony in the desert. He is described to be well-muscled with a strong stride and a handsome face. He has a daughter, Mary Whiting. Whiting was the Colony's official trader with the Kumajis and had grown rich because of his business with them. Despite this relationship with the Kumajis, he and his daughter were forced to escape with the rest of their colony. He remains bitter over the fact that wherever the colony escapes to, he and his daughter will be poor even with their supposed riches, which are tied up with a Kumaji moneylender. \n\nIn the middle of the journey, Whiting disappears with Cantwell's unicopter. It is deduced that he took off with the unicopter with the intention of informing the Kumajis, at a base not too far away, of the caravan's location in return for his money. Whiting successfully makes it to the Kumajis' base, and after running into his daughter and Cantwell, he remains steadfast on his decision because they might choose to torture his daughter for information. After a scuffle with the Kumaji guard, Whiting is fatally stabbed on accident by the guard's pike. Knowing he will soon die, Whiting promises to lead the Kumajis astray with the wrong information and wishes his daughter and Cantwell off. ",
"Tobias Whiting is one of the humans who settled on the desert planet, and who was a constant victim of the natives’ violence. Tobias and his daughter Mary are also part of the survivors of the last attack, which forces them to move away towards a large city. Tobias is revealed to have been a very wealthy man, and had a lot of business with the natives. After Steve meets up with them, Tobias decides to steal Steve’s ship and negotiate with the natives who were hunting them. Steve wants to get his money back in return for giving up the location of the other humans. After Steve and Mary find him, he dies while they try to escape, but just before dying he changes his mind and sends the natives to the wrong location. "
] |
32890
|
HOME IS WHERE YOU LEFT IT
By ADAM CHASE
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories February
1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The chance of mass slaughter was their eternal nightmare.
How black is the blackest treachery? Is the most callous
traitor entitled to mercy? Steve pondered these questions. His decision?
That at times the villain should possibly be spoken of as a hero.
Only the shells of deserted mud-brick houses greeted Steve Cantwell when
he reached the village.
He poked around in them for a while. The desert heat was searing,
parching, and the Sirian sun gleamed balefully off the blades of Steve's
unicopter, which had brought him from Oasis City, almost five hundred
miles away. He had remembered heat from his childhood here on Sirius'
second planet with the Earth colony, but not heat like this. It was like
a magnet drawing all the moisture out of his body.
He walked among the buildings, surprise and perhaps sadness etched on
his gaunt, weather-beaten face. Childhood memories flooded back: the
single well from which all the families drew their water, the mud-brick
house, hardly different from the others and just four walls and a roof
now, in which he'd lived with his aunt after his parents had been killed
in a Kumaji raid, the community center where he'd spent his happiest
time as a boy.
He went to the well and hoisted up a pailful of water. The winch creaked
as he remembered. He ladled out the water, suddenly very thirsty, and
brought the ladle to his lips.
He hurled the ladle away. The water was bitter. Not brackish.
Poisoned.
He spat with fury, then kneeled and stuffed his mouth with sand, almost
gagging. After a while he spat out the sand too and opened his canteen
and rinsed his mouth. His lips and mouth were paralyzed by contact with
the poison. He walked quickly across the well-square to his aunt's
house. Inside, it was dim but hardly cooler. Steve was sweating, the
saline sweat making him blink. He scowled, not understanding. The table
was set in his aunt's house. A coffeepot was on the stove and last
night's partially-consumed dinner still on the table.
The well had been poisoned, the town had been deserted on the spur of
the moment, and Steve had returned to his boyhood home from Earth—too
late for anything.
He went outside into the square. A lizard was sunning itself and staring
at him with lidless eyes. When he moved across the square, the lizard
scurried away.
"Earthman!" a quavering voice called.
Steve ran toward the sound. In the scant shadow of the community center,
a Kumaji was resting. He was a withered old man, all skin and bones and
sweat-stiffened tunic, with enormous red-rimmed eyes. His purple skin,
which had been blasted by the merciless sun, was almost black.
Steve held the canteen to his lips and watched his throat working almost
spasmodically to get the water down. After a while Steve withdrew the
canteen and said:
"What happened here?"
"They're gone. All gone."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"The Kumaji—"
"You're Kumaji."
"This is my town," the old man said. "I lived with the Earthmen. Now
they're gone."
"But you stayed here—"
"To die," the old man said, without self-pity. "I'm too old to flee, too
old to fight, too old for anything but death. More water."
Steve gave him another drink. "You still haven't told me what happened."
Actually, though, Steve could guess. With the twenty-second century
Earth population hovering at the eleven billion mark, colonies were
sought everywhere. Even on a parched desert wasteland like this. The
Kumaji tribesmen had never accepted the colony as a fact of their life
on the desert, and in a way Steve could not blame them. It meant one
oasis less for their own nomadic sustenance. When Steve was a boy,
Kumaji raids were frequent. At school on Earth and Luna he'd read about
the raids, how they'd increased in violence, how the Earth government,
so far away and utterly unable to protect its distant colony, had
suggested withdrawal from the Kumaji desert settlement, especially since
a colony could exist there under only the most primitive conditions,
almost like the purple-skinned Kumaji natives themselves.
"When did it happen?" Steve demanded.
"Last night." It was now midafternoon. "Three folks died," the Kumaji
said in his almost perfect English, "from the poisoning of the well. The
well was the last straw. The colonists had no choice. They had to go,
and go fast, taking what little water they had left in the houses."
"Will they try to walk all the way through to Oasis City?" Oasis City,
built at the confluence of two underground rivers which came to the
surface there and flowed the rest of the way to the sea above ground,
was almost five hundred miles from the colony. Five hundred miles of
trackless sands and hundred-and-thirty-degree heat....
"They have to," the old man said. "And they have to hurry. Men, women
and children. The Kumaji are after them."
Steve felt irrational hatred then. He thought it would help if he could
find some of the nomadic tribesmen and kill them. It might help the way
he felt, he knew, but it certainly wouldn't help the fleeing colonists,
trekking across a parched wilderness—to the safety of Oasis City—or
death.
"Come on," Steve said, making up his mind. "The unicopter can hold two
in a pinch."
"You're going after them?"
"I've got to. They're my people. I've been away too long."
"Say, you're young Cantwell, aren't you? Now I remember."
"Yes, I'm Steve Cantwell."
"I'm not going anyplace, young fellow."
"But you can't stay here, without any good water to drink, without—"
"I'm staying," the old man said, still without self-pity, just
matter-of-factly. "The Earth folks have no room for me and I can't blame
'em. The Kumaji'll kill me for a renegade, I figure. I lived a good,
long life. I've no regrets. Go after your people, young fellow. They'll
need every extra strong right arm they can get. You got any weapons?"
"No," Steve said.
"Too bad. Well, good-bye and good luck."
"But you can't—"
"Oh, I'm staying. I want to stay. This is my home. It's the only home
I'll ever have. Good luck, young fellow."
Slowly, Steve walked to his unicopter. It was nothing more than a small
metal disk on which to stand, and a shaft with four turbo-blades. It
could do sixty miles an hour at an elevation of two thousand feet.
Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.
The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."
The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.
Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East—and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....
"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."
Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"
The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a craggy, handsome face. In ten years he had
hardly changed at all, while Steve Cantwell, the boy, had become Steve
Cantwell the man. He had been the Colony's official trader with the
Kumajis, and had grown rich—by colony standards—at his business. Now,
Steve realized, all that was behind him, and he could only flee with the
others—either back to the terribly crowded Earth or on in search of a
new colony on some other outworld, if they could get the transportation.
Perhaps that explained his bitterness.
"So you've come back, eh? You sure picked a time, Cantwell."
The refugees were still about a quarter of a mile off, coming up slowly.
They hardly seemed to be moving at all. "Is my aunt all right?" Steve
said. She was the only family he remembered.
Tobias Whiting shook his head slowly. "I hate to be the one to tell you
this. Brace yourself for a shock. Your aunt was one of those who died
from the poisoned water last night."
For a long moment, Steve said nothing. The only emotion he felt was
pity—pity for the hard life his aunt had lived, and the hard death.
Sadness would come later, if there was to be a time for sadness.
The caravan reached them then. The first person Steve saw was a girl.
She wore the shroud-like desert garment and her face—it would be a
pretty face under other circumstances, Steve realized—was etched with
lines of fatigue. Steve did not recognize her. "Who is he, Dad?" the
girl said.
"Young Cantwell. Remember?"
So this was Mary Whiting, Steve thought. Why, she'd been a moppet ten
years ago! How old? Ten years old maybe. The years crowded him suddenly.
She was a woman now....
"Steve Cantwell?" Mary said. "Of course I remember. Hello, Steve. I—I'm
sorry you had to come back at a time like this. I'm sorry about your
aunt. If there's anything I can do...."
Steve shook his head, then shook the hand she offered him. She was a
slim, strong girl with a firm handshake. Her concern for him at a time
like this was little short of amazing, especially since it was
completely genuine.
He appreciated it.
Tobias Whiting said: "Shame of it is, Cantwell, some of us could get
along with the Kumaji. I had a pretty good business here, you know
that." He looked with bitterness at the dusty file of refugees. "But I
never got a credit out of it. Wherever we wind up, my girl and I will be
poor again. We could have been rich."
Steve asked, "What happened to all your profits?"
"Tied up with a Kumaji moneylender, but thanks to what happened I'll
never see it again."
Mary winced, as if her father's words and his self-pity were painful to
her. Then others came up and a few minutes were spent in back-pounding
and hand-shaking as some of the men who had been boys with Steve came up
to recognize and be recognized. Their greeting was warm, as Tobias
Whiting's had been cool. Despite the knowledge of what lay behind all of
them, and what still lay ahead, it was a little like homecoming.
But Steve liked Mary Whiting's warm, friendly smile best of all. It was
comforting and reassuring.
Three days later, Tobias Whiting disappeared.
The caravan had been making no more than ten or fifteen miles a day.
Their water supply was almost gone but on the fourth day they hoped to
reach an oasis in the desert. Two of the older folks had died of
fatigue. A third was critically ill and there was little that could be
done for him. The food supply was running short, but they could always
slaughter their camels for food and make their way to Oasis City, still
four hundred and some miles away, with nothing but the clothes on their
backs.
And then, during the fourth night, Tobias Whiting disappeared, taking
Steve's unicopter. A sentry had heard the low muffled whine of the
turbojets during the night and had seen the small craft take off, but
had assumed Steve had taken it up for some reason. Each day Steve had
done so, reconnoitering for signs of the Kumaji.
"But why?" someone asked. "Why?"
At first there was no answer. Then a woman whose husband had died the
day before said: "It's no secret Whiting has plenty of money—with the
Kumaji."
None of them looked at Mary. She stood there defiantly, not saying
anything, and Steve squeezed her hand.
"Now, wait a minute," one of Whiting's friends said.
"Wait, nothing." This was Jeremy Gort, who twice had been mayor of the
colony. "I know how Whiting's mind works. He slaved all his life for
that money, that's the way he'll see it. Cantwell, didn't you say the
Kumaji were looking for us, to kill us?"
"That's what I was told," Steve said.
"All right," Gort went on relentlessly. "Then this is what I figure must
have happened. Whiting got to brooding over his lost fortune and finally
decided he had to have it. So, he went off at night in Cantwell's
'copter, determined to get it. Only catch is, folks, if I know the
Kumaji, they won't just give it to him—not by a long sight."
"No?" someone asked.
"No sir. They'll trade. For our location. And if Whiting went off like
that without even saying good-bye to his girl here, my guess is he'll
make the trade." His voice reflected some bitterness.
Mary went to Gort and slapped his face. The elderly man did not even
blink. "Well," he asked her gently, "did your pa tell you he was going?"
"N-no," Mary said. There were tears in her eyes, but she did not cry.
Gort turned to Steve. "Cantwell, can he get far in that 'copter?"
Steve shook his head. "Ten or fifteen miles is all. Almost out of fuel,
Mr. Gort. You saw how I took her up for only a quick mile swing each
day. He won't get far."
"He'll crash in the desert?"
"Crash or crash-land," Steve said.
Mary sobbed, and bit her lip, and was silent.
"We've got to stop him," Gort said. "And fast. If he gets to the Kumaji,
they'll send down a raiding party and we'll be finished. We could never
fight them off without the protection of our village. Near as I can
figure, there's a Kumaji base fifty miles due north of here. Whiting
knows it too, so that's where he'll be going, I figure. Can't spare more
than a couple of men to look for him, though, in case the Kumaji find
us—or are led to us—and attack."
Steve said, "I should have taken something out of the 'copter every
night, so it couldn't start. I'll go."
Mary came forward boldly. "I have to go. He's my father. If he crashed
out there, he may be hurt. He may be—dying."
Gort looked at her. "And if he's trying to sell us out to the Kumajis?"
"Then—then I'll do whatever Steve asks me to. I promise."
"That's good enough for me," Steve said.
A few minutes later, armed with atorifles and their share of the food
and water that was left, Steve and Mary set out northward across the
sand while the caravan continued east. Fear of what they might find
mounted.
The first night, they camped in the lee of low sandhills. The second
night they found a small spring with brackish but drinkable water. On
the third day, having covered half the distance to the Kumaji
settlement, they began to encounter Kumaji patrols, on foot or thlotback , the six-legged desert animals running so swiftly over the
sands and so low to the ground that they almost seemed to be gliding.
Steve and Mary hardly spoke. Talk was unnecessary. But slowly a bond
grew between them. Steve liked this slim silent girl who had come out
here with him risking her life although she must have known deep in her
heart that her father had almost certainly decided to turn traitor in
order to regain his fortune.
On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and
made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had
expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he
escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the
Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of
the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it
all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm
sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you
couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own
efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were
spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on
their thlots . Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel
aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken
that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular
tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill
you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live
the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to
make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now,
now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll
torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I
couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the
larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlot skin wall
of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon.
When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and
distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't
want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were
doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve.
Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve
silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information?
Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them
hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one
willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing
one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one
guard, the man outside, came....
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he
wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's
voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting.
He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as
Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat
and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside.
Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies.
The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against
Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the
thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed
out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the
guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp
seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening
fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or
death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek
another.
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve
couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out
awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned,
but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was
either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve
had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to
kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out
Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He
couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He
touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying
softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what
you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are
heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan.
You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't
there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to
deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he
would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown
night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the
sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly
remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary
death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots .
The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night
to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he
decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the
other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In
the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him,
and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for
effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all
night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any
direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they reached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said,
"Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death,
sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can
make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all
reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
|
Who is Mrs. Brundage, and what happens to her?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dream Town by Henry Slesar.
Relevant chunks:
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
Question:
Who is Mrs. Brundage, and what happens to her?
Answer:
|
[
"Mrs. Brundage is one of the townspeople that live in the town that Sol got robbed in. She and her Husband own a barber shop, in which her husband was the barber. It is revealed that the execution in the Armagon from the first night was in fact Mr. Brundage, and that he was executed for breaking the rules. When Sol and Mr. Dawes picks up the body, she seems very distraught and sad, but she seems to understand the repercussions of her husband’s actions. ",
"Mrs. Brundage is the wife of Vincent Brundage. When Sol arrives in town, her husband has been executed. Mom explains that she has to give Mrs. Brundage a call the next day to comfort her. When they go to the parlor, Mrs. Brundage is in a housecoat with her hair in curlers and has puffy red eyes. She has been grieving all day, even though the others have come to collect Brundage’s body. She tries to plead with them, saying that her husband did nothing wrong. She insists that it was all because he was too stubborn, even though the others say that it had to be this way. Even though she continues to cry as Brundage’s body is taken out, she refuses to say anything about Armagon to Sol.",
"Mrs. Brundage is one of the citizens of the town. She’s Vincent Brundage’s wife and one of the people who visit Armagon at night. She witnesses the trial and the execution of her husband who apparently broke one of the laws. In the morning after his death, she gets visited by Dawes, Charlie, Sheriff Coogan, and Sol who is a stranger to her. The first three come to the barbershop to pick up the body. Becker tries to learn something from her about her husband’s trial or Armagon but she quickly leaves crying. At some point, she also gets a call from Mom",
"Mrs. Brundage is the wife of Vincent Brundage, the owner of a barbershop who seems to break the law in the dream place and get executed. Mrs. Brundage sobs when Mr. Dawes and the other three men come to her home because her husband died of a heart attack. She gets a call from Mrs. Dawes around ten about her husband’s death. She wears a housecoat, has her hair in curlers, and has swollen and red eyes. When Sol keeps asking her questions about her husband’s death and the dream place, she is shocked and cannot bear to take more, so she goes inside the house. When Mr. Dawes and the other two men carry her husband’s corpse out, she is weeping behind them. When they all leave, she slams the door."
] |
29193
|
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
|
Who is Mom, and what are her characteristics?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dream Town by Henry Slesar.
Relevant chunks:
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
Question:
Who is Mom, and what are her characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"Mom is the wife of Willie Dawes, and is the kind woman who received Sol when his car was robbed and he was wet from the rain. She was very kind to give him the sofa, after which she hurried up to her room to attend the Armagon execution. She seems to be a very good mom, and she enjoys cooking for her family. She is very helpful to Sol, but she also makes it clear that she isn’t going to go out of her way to help him more, like he has to sleep on the sofa and that breakfast is at 7. ",
"Mom is the first person Sol meets when he arrives at her doorstep in the rain. She is described to look like a mother from the homier political cartoons. She is plump, apple-cheeked, and white-haired. She also wears a fussy, old-fashioned nightgown, and a well-worn houserobe when she meets Sol. Mom is very kind, instantly welcoming Sol inside of the house and letting him sleep on the couch. Although she apologizes about the temporary accommodations, she is kind enough to refuse any form of payment from Sol. Mom is also a very good cook, as she is in charge of making all of the meals in the house. Despite Mom’s kind side, she is also a strict parent towards Sally. She often tells her to stop annoying their guest and tells her to brush her teeth before anything. Mom also looks out for the other townspeople too, giving Mrs. Brundage a phone call after her husband is executed. When Sol reaches Armagon, Mom is wearing regal scarlet robes and scolding Sally to give the sheriff his helmet back. ",
"Mom is the second adult in the Dawes household and Sally’s mother. She is very kind and selfless. She allows Sol, a total stranger who knocks at her door at three at night, to sleep on their sofa and gives him a towel to clean himself. She makes him breakfast in the morning and refuses his money. Mom asks Dawes to help Sol get to the sheriff. She also decides to call Mrs. Brundage after her husband Vincent gets executed to express her condolences. She is a relatively good mother who can handle Sally’s rebellious nature and also a rather generous host who feeds her entire family and Sol every day. ",
"Mom is the housewife of the Dawes family, the wife of Mr. Dawes. She is called “Ma” by Mr. Dawes. She is plump, having apple cheeks and white hair. She wears a fussy, old-fashioned nightgown when Sol Becker, an engineer who lost his car on his way to a friend’s wedding, asks for a stay. She welcomes Sol to stay in their house and lets him sleep on the sofa. She is a cheerful woman when preparing the family’s meals. She is always busy in the kitchen, and she often educates Sally, her daughter, about not doing something inappropriate. She is strict with Sally. Sometimes, she gets confused between day and night because she goes to the dream place every night. In addition, she is a sympathetic woman because she remembers to call Mrs. Brundage to comfort her after the loss of her husband. When Sol asks for another stay in the house, she agrees and insists that he does not need to pay for it."
] |
29193
|
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
|
Who is Willie Dawes, and what are his characteristics?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dream Town by Henry Slesar.
Relevant chunks:
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
Question:
Who is Willie Dawes, and what are his characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"Willie is the head of the family that hosts and helps Sol after his car was stolen. He seems to have a lot of influence in the town, as he helps the sheriff in his day to day tasks and everyone in the town knows him. He is described as a tall and skinny man. He is also married to Mom, which is the woman that first received Sol after his car was stolen. Together she and Willie have a child called Sally. At the end, it is revealed that Willie is actually the king of the Armagon, which is why he has so much influence in the town. ",
"Willie Dawes is the husband of Mom and the father of Sally. He is a tall and rangy man, with a bobbing Adam’s apple and a lined face. When he first meets Sol, he is sympathetic to the man’s situation and tells him that they can go see the sheriff after breakfast. He is also very caring towards his family as well, always eating with Mom and Sally at home. He is very quick to correct Sally’s mistakes as well, when she mispronounces Armagon and execution. However, although Dawes seems friendly, he can turn cold when provoked. Whenever Sol asks about Armagon, Dawes responds coldly and changes the subject. He is also cautious around Sol too, believing that the other man is a reporter who is here to expose the secret of the town. However, Dawes later shows an authoritative side too, donning magnificent attire and living up to his title as a King. ",
"Willie Dawes is the head of the Dawes household, Mom’s husband, Sally’s father, and, apparently, a king of Armagon. He seems relatively friendly and approachable when he first meets Sol and promises to take him over to the sheriff. Dawes is rather outgoing - a lot of citizens know him. Still, he is very protective of their town’s dream of Armagon. So whenever Sol asks about this place or the execution, Dawes becomes cold, stern, and uneasy. He plainly refuses to answer the first questions about it and then later makes sure Sol is not a prying journalist who wants to write about Armagon. Dawes also seems rational and emotionless when it comes to Armagon’s laws and those who breach them. For example, he pragmatically approaches the death of Vincent Brundage, who got executed for breaking a rule, and considers his punishment necessary. ",
"Willie Dawes is the owner of the house where Sol Becker, an engineer who loses his car on his way to a friend’s wedding, borrows for a stay. He is called “Pa” by his wife, and he often calls her “Ma.” Mr. Dawes is tall and rangy. He is short-tempered, and whenever Sol asks about the dream place, he tells Sol to mind his own business coldly. He gets annoyed by Sol’s questions often. Mr. Dawes walks so fast that Sol has to try hard to catch up with him when walking in the town. Mr. Dawes seems to make a speech in the dream place the first night that Sol stays in their house. He goes to the barbershop with the other two men, carrying Mr. Brundage’s corpse, who seems to die of a heart attack. He seems to be the king in the dream place, where he wears magnificent attire."
] |
29193
|
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
|
What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dream Town by Henry Slesar.
Relevant chunks:
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The plot follows Sol, a veteran of the U.S. army who, after picking up a hitchhiker on the way to a wedding, gets his car robbed near a small town. He ends up staying in the house of a young family who are kind enough to host him. They are very nice with him, and even offer him breakfast the next morning. As Sol learns more of the town and the family, he learns that the people in the town share the same dream every night, in a place called the Armagon. He also learns that there was an execution last night in the same place. He follows Willie Dawes, the head of the family, to pick up the body of the person that was executed. They are also accompanied by the sheriff of the town and by a man named Charlie. When Sol sees the body of the executed person, he starts to get worried and starts asking people in the town questions about the Armagon. That night, Sol stays with the Dawes family again, and when he goes to sleep he meets with the townspeople in the Armagon, where it seems that he will be executed. \n\n",
"Sol Becker meets a woman at the doorway who looks like a mom from a homey cartoon. She is confused by why Sol is at her door, and he explains that he is a hitchhiker going to Salinas. She lets him come into her house, where he asks if he can stay the night. She explains that he does not have to pay and rushes back upstairs so she will not miss the execution. Sol goes to sleep and is woken up again by a little girl named Sally. He asks what time it is, but Sally responds that she likes poached eggs. Sol desperately tries to get her to leave, but Mom sends her away. Sol tries to call Fred but is met with indifference; a man named Willie Dawes offers to take him to the sheriff as Mom finishes breakfast. They talk about Armagon during breakfast, which is a place that everybody dreams about at night. Sol asks about the execution again, but Dawes tells him to eat his breakfast. They enter a wooden building to meet Charlie, and Dawes mentions that they are picking up Sheriff Coogan too. As they discuss with the other people, Sol realizes that everybody dreams about Armagon. Charlie is the Prince Regent, and they meet the sheriff too. The men go to the shop to find Mrs. Brundage, who is in grief because of her husband. Sol tries to ask what had happened in Armagon, but Mrs. Brundage refuses to tell him. Everybody is more worried about Mr. Brundage, so Sol goes on a walk and tries to ask about Armagon. Everybody says that it is none of his business, so he has no choice but to stay in the town until his car is found. Sally comes home at five thirty and asks if he is going to stay, and Mom refuses to hear anything about pay. Sol tries to ask Mr. Dawes for some more information again, but he refuses to say anything. When Sol goes to sleep that night, he finds himself awake in Armagon. Sally, Mom, and Mr. Dawes have returned wearing much finer clothing, indicating a higher status. Charlie asks if this is the snooper, and Dawes tells him that he should round up the knights. Sally screams for execution, and the knights begin to appear. They point the tips of their sharp spears at him as Sol wonders if he will ever awake.",
"Sol Becker was driving to the wedding in Salinas - his old army friend Fred was getting married. Late at night, he picked up a hitchhiker who minutes later pushed Sol out of the car and drove away, leaving the man soaking near an unknown village. He knocked at the door of a village house, and a woman - he called her Mom - let him in. Sol briefly told her what had happened, and she allowed him to sleep on the couch. Anxiously whispering that she would miss some execution, Mom went upstairs, leaving Sol confused but grateful. He got woken up by a little girl named Sally, pestering him with awkward questions - Mom told her to stop and get ready for breakfast. Minutes later, he found a telephone and called Fred, who didn’t seem very upset by the news of Sol probably missing the wedding. After hanging up the phone, Sol talked to a man called Dawes, who promised to take him to Sheriff Coogan to report the car theft after breakfast. Mom called out that the breakfast was ready. Sally told Sol about Armagon - a place both parents and the daughter dreamt about every night. She also started talking about some execution, but Dawes coldly refused to answer Sol’s questions about this. Before meeting the sheriff, Sol and Dawes crossed the street and picked up a man named Charlie or, as Dawes said, Prince Regent. As they were marching down the street, they met a woman who, Sol eventually realized, was also dreaming about Armagon. They finally came to the sheriff’s house. He listened to Sol’s story while they all were walking to a barbershop to pick up the body of a man called Brundage. They saw a crying woman - the wife of the dead, and Sol again made an attempt to understand who got killed and why. Soon, they came back with the body and told Sol to wait while they were carrying it somewhere else. Sol took a walk and again tried to ask citizens about the mystery place from their dreams but didn’t get much information. He then went back to the Dawes residence. A State Trooper asked him some questions about the car and told him to remain in town until further notice. Sol ate lunch, walked for a bit, and returned in the evening. Sally - the daughter - clutched his leg and then started telling him about her day. Mr.Dawes came later and asked Sol about his questions to the citizens and then wondered if the man was a reporter. After a quiet evening, they all went to bed. Sol fell asleep and suddenly realized he was somewhere else, surrounded by marble pillars. He saw Sally running around in a white toga, then the sheriff chasing her. He finally saw Dawes dressed as a king who welcomed Becker to Armagon. The king unexpectedly asked Charlie to round up the knights, and Sally started triumphantly screaming: “Execution!”. Sol asked them to stop, but the knights kept approaching. ",
"Sol Becker, an engineer whose car is stolen by a hitchhiker on his way to Salinas for his friend’s wedding, asks for a stay in a house. The owner of the house is a family with parents and a kid. On the first night when Sol makes himself in the house, he sleeps in the living room and notices Mom of the family hurry upstairs to join a court. The following morning, Sol is woken by their daughter, Sally, who asks him weird questions. After Mom orders Sally to leave Sol alone to let him dress, Sol borrows the phone to talk to his friend, whose wedding he will miss. After that, he meets Mr. Dawes, the father of Sally, and they eat breakfast together.\n\nAt the table, Sol learns that the family dreams of going to the same place called Armagon every night, where there is a palace, and execution happens there. After breakfast, Mr. Dawes takes Sol to seek Sheriff Coogan. On their way, they meet Charlie, who is called Prince Regent. Charlie joins them, and they find the Sheriff. They go to a barbershop, where the owner’s wife, Mrs. Brundage, is sobbing because her husband died. The three men from the town go into the house and carry the corpse out. Sol tries to know the truth by asking Mrs. Brundage, but he is scolded for not being respectful. After seeing the men deal with the corpse, he takes a walk in the town. During his walk, Sol realizes everyone in the town dreams of going to the same place every night. He learns little about the place. When he gets back to the house, he is allowed to stay for one more night. At night, after he falls asleep, he finds himself in a palace where Sally and Charlie are playing. When Mr. Dawes finds him, he orders Charlie to gather the Knights. The Knights surround Sol, and he realizes that he may not be able to wake again, just like Mr. Brundage.\n"
] |
29193
|
Henry Slesar, young New York advertising executive and by now no
longer a new-comer to either this magazine or to this field, describes
a strange little town that you, yourself, may blunder into one of these
evenings. But, if you do, beware—beware of the Knights!
dream town
by ... HENRY SLESAR
The woman in the doorway looked so harmless. Who
was to tell she had some rather startling interests?
The
woman in the
doorway looked like Mom in
the homier political cartoons.
She was plump, apple-cheeked,
white-haired. She
wore a fussy, old-fashioned
nightgown, and was busily
clutching a worn house-robe
around her expansive middle.
She blinked at Sol Becker's
rain-flattened hair and hang-dog
expression, and said:
"What is it? What do you
want?"
"I'm sorry—" Sol's voice
was pained. "The man in the
diner said you might put me
up. I had my car stolen: a
hitchhiker; going to Salinas ..."
He was puffing.
"Hitchhiker? I don't understand."
She clucked at the
sight of the pool of water he
was creating in her foyer.
"Well, come inside, for heaven's
sake. You're soaking!"
"Thanks," Sol said gratefully.
With the door firmly shut
behind him, the warm interior
of the little house covered
him like a blanket. He
shivered, and let the warmth
seep over him. "I'm terribly
sorry. I know how late it is."
He looked at his watch, but
the face was too misty to
make out the hour.
"Must be nearly three," the
woman sniffed. "You couldn't
have come at a worse time. I
was just on my way to
court—"
The words slid by him. "If
I could just stay overnight.
Until the morning. I could
call some friends in San Fernando.
I'm very susceptible to
head colds," he added inanely.
"Well, take those shoes off,
first," the woman grumbled.
"You can undress in the parlor,
if you'll keep off the rug.
You won't mind using the
sofa?"
"No, of course not. I'd be
happy to pay—"
"Oh, tush, nobody's asking
you to pay. This isn't a hotel.
You mind if I go back upstairs?
They're gonna miss
me at the palace."
"No, of course not," Sol
said. He followed her into
the darkened parlor, and
watched as she turned the
screw on a hurricane-style
lamp, shedding a yellow pool
of light over half a flowery
sofa and a doily-covered wing
chair. "You go on up. I'll be
perfectly fine."
"Guess you can use a towel,
though. I'll get you one,
then I'm going up. We wake
pretty early in this house.
Breakfast's at seven; you'll
have to be up if you want
any."
"I really can't thank you
enough—"
"Tush," the woman said.
She scurried out, and returned
a moment later with a
thick bath towel. "Sorry I
can't give you any bedding.
But you'll find it nice and
warm in here." She squinted
at the dim face of a ship's-wheel
clock on the mantle,
and made a noise with her
tongue. "Three-thirty!" she
exclaimed. "I'll miss the
whole execution ..."
"The what?"
"Goodnight, young man,"
Mom said firmly.
She padded off, leaving Sol
holding the towel. He patted
his face, and then scrubbed
the wet tangle of brown hair.
Carefully, he stepped off the
carpet and onto the stone
floor in front of the fireplace.
He removed his
drenched coat and suit jacket,
and squeezed water out
over the ashes.
He stripped down to his
underwear, wondering about
next morning's possible embarrassment,
and decided to
use the damp bath towel as a
blanket. The sofa was downy
and comfortable. He curled
up under the towel, shivered
once, and closed his eyes.
He
was tired and very
sleepy, and his customary
nightly review was limited to
a few detached thoughts
about the wedding he was
supposed to attend in Salinas
that weekend ... the hoodlum
who had responded to his
good-nature by dumping him
out of his own car ... the slogging
walk to the village ...
the little round woman who
was hurrying off, like the
White Rabbit, to some mysterious
appointment on the
upper floor ...
Then he went to sleep.
A voice awoke him, shrill
and questioning.
"Are you nakkid ?"
His eyes flew open, and he
pulled the towel protectively
around his body and glared
at the little girl with the rust-red
pigtails.
"Huh, mister?" she said,
pushing a finger against her
freckled nose. "Are you?"
"No," he said angrily. "I'm
not naked. Will you please
go away?"
"Sally!" It was Mom, appearing
in the doorway of the
parlor. "You leave the gentleman
alone." She went off
again.
"Yes," Sol said. "Please let
me get dressed. If you don't
mind." The girl didn't move.
"What time is it?"
"Dunno," Sally shrugged.
"I like poached eggs. They're
my favorite eggs in the whole
world."
"That's good," Sol said desperately.
"Now why don't you
be a good girl and eat your
poached eggs. In the kitchen."
"Ain't ready yet. You going
to stay for breakfast?"
"I'm not going to do anything
until you get out of
here."
She put the end of a pigtail
in her mouth and sat down on
the chair opposite. "I went to
the palace last night. They
had an exelution."
"Please," Sol groaned. "Be
a good girl, Sally. If you let
me get dressed, I'll show you
how to take your thumb off."
"Oh, that's an old trick. Did
you ever see an exelution?"
"No. Did you ever see a little
girl with her hide
tanned?"
"Huh?"
" Sally! " Mom again, sterner.
"You get out of there, or
you-know-what ..."
"Okay," the girl said
blithely. "I'm goin' to the palace
again. If I brush my
teeth. Aren't you ever gonna
get up?" She skipped out of
the room, and Sol hastily sat
up and reached for his
trousers.
When he had dressed, the
clothes still damp and unpleasant
against his skin, he
went out of the parlor and
found the kitchen. Mom was
busy at the stove. He said:
"Good morning."
"Breakfast in ten minutes,"
she said cheerfully. "You like
poached eggs?"
"Sure. Do you have a telephone?"
"In the hallway. Party line,
so you may have to wait."
He tried for fifteen minutes
to get through, but there
was a woman on the line who
was terribly upset about a
cotton dress she had ordered
from Sears, and was telling
the world about it.
Finally, he got his call
through to Salinas, and a
sleepy-voiced Fred, his old
Army buddy, listened somewhat
indifferently to his tale
of woe. "I might miss the
wedding," Sol said unhappily.
"I'm awfully sorry." Fred
didn't seem to be half as sorry
as he was. When Sol hung
up, he was feeling more despondent
than ever.
A man, tall and rangy, with
a bobbing Adam's apple and
a lined face, came into the
hallway. "Hullo?" he said inquiringly.
"You the fella had
the car stolen?"
"Yes."
The man scratched his ear.
"Take you over to Sheriff
Coogan after breakfast. He'll
let the Stateys know about it.
My name's Dawes."
Sol accepted a careful
handshake.
"Don't get many people
comin' into town," Dawes
said, looking at him curiously.
"Ain't seen a stranger in
years. But you look like the
rest of us." He chuckled.
Mom called out: "Breakfast!"
At
the table, Dawes
asked his destination.
"Wedding in Salinas," he
explained. "Old Army friend
of mine. I picked this hitchhiker
up about two miles from
here. He seemed okay."
"Never can tell," Dawes
said placidly, munching egg.
"Hey, Ma. That why you
were so late comin' to court
last night?"
"That's right, Pa." She
poured the blackest coffee
Sol had ever seen. "Didn't
miss much, though."
"What court is that?" Sol
asked politely, his mouth full.
"Umagum," Sally said, a
piece of toast sticking out
from the side of her mouth.
"Don't you know nothin' ?"
" Arma gon," Dawes corrected.
He looked sheepishly at
the stranger. "Don't expect
Mister—" He cocked an eyebrow.
"What's the name?"
"Becker."
"Don't expect Mr. Becker
knows anything about Armagon.
It's just a dream, you
know." He smiled apologetically.
"Dream? You mean this—Armagon
is a place you dream
about?"
"Yep," Dawes said. He lifted
cup to lip. "Great coffee,
Ma." He leaned back with a
contented sigh. "Dream about
it every night. Got so used to
the place, I get all confused
in the daytime."
Mom said: "I get muddle-headed
too, sometimes."
"You mean—" Sol put his
napkin in his lap. "You mean you dream about the same
place?"
"Sure," Sally piped. "We
all go there at night. I'm goin'
to the palace again, too."
"If you brush your teeth,"
Mom said primly.
"If I brush my teeth. Boy,
you shoulda seen the exelution!"
"Execution," her father
said.
"Oh, my goodness!" Mom
got up hastily. "That reminds
me. I gotta call poor Mrs.
Brundage. It's the least I
could do."
"Good idea," Dawes nodded.
"And I'll have to round
up some folks and get old
Brundage out of there."
Sol was staring. He opened
his mouth, but couldn't think
of the right question to ask.
Then he blurted out: "What
execution?"
"None of your business,"
the man said coldly. "You eat
up, young man. If you want
me to get Sheriff Coogan
lookin' for your car."
The rest of the meal went
silently, except for Sally's insistence
upon singing her
school song between mouthfuls.
When Dawes was
through, he pushed back his
plate and ordered Sol to get
ready.
Sol grabbed his topcoat and
followed the man out the
door.
"Have to stop someplace
first," Dawes said. "But we'll
be pickin' up the Sheriff on
the way. Okay with you?"
"Fine," Sol said uneasily.
The rain had stopped, but
the heavy clouds seemed reluctant
to leave the skies over
the small town. There was a
skittish breeze blowing, and
Sol Becker tightened the collar
of his coat around his
neck as he tried to keep up
with the fast-stepping Dawes.
They
crossed the
street diagonally, and entered
a two-story wooden building.
Dawes took the stairs at a
brisk pace, and pushed open
the door on the second floor.
A fat man looked up from
behind a desk.
"Hi, Charlie. Thought I'd
see if you wanted to help
move Brundage."
The man batted his eyes.
"Oh, Brundage!" he said.
"You know, I clean forgot
about him?" He laughed.
"Imagine me forgetting
that?"
"Yeah." Dawes wasn't
amused. "And you Prince Regent."
"Aw, Willie—"
"Well, come on. Stir that
fat carcass. Gotta pick up
Sheriff Coogan, too. This
here gentleman has to see him
about somethin' else."
The man regarded Sol suspiciously.
"Never seen you
before. Night or day. Stranger?"
"Come on !" Dawes said.
The fat man grunted and
hoisted himself out of the
swivel chair. He followed
lamely behind the two men
as they went out into the
street again.
A woman, with an empty
market basket, nodded casually
to them. "Mornin', folks.
Enjoyed it last night.
Thought you made a right
nice speech, Mr. Dawes."
"Thanks," Dawes answered
gruffly, but obviously flattered.
"We were just goin'
over to Brundage's to pick up
the body. Ma's gonna pay a
call on Mrs. Brundage around
ten o'clock. You care to visit?"
"Why, I think that's very
nice," the woman said. "I'll
be sure and do that." She
smiled at the fat man. "Mornin',
Prince."
Sol's head was spinning. As
they left the woman and continued
their determined
march down the quiet street,
he tried to find answers.
"Look, Mr. Dawes." He was
panting; the pace was fast.
"Does she dream about this—Armagon,
too? That woman
back there?"
"Yep."
Charlie chuckled. "He's a
stranger, all right."
"And you, Mr.—" Sol
turned to the fat man. "You
also know about this palace
and everything?"
"I told you," Dawes said
testily. "Charlie here's Prince
Regent. But don't let the fancy
title fool you. He got no
more power than any Knight
of the Realm. He's just too
dern fat to do much more'n
sit on a throne and eat grapes.
That right, Charlie?"
The fat man giggled.
"Here's the Sheriff," Dawes
said.
The Sheriff, a sleepy-eyed
citizen with a long, sad face,
was rocking on a porch as
they approached his house,
trying to puff a half-lit pipe.
He lifted one hand wearily
when he saw them.
"Hi, Cookie," Dawes
grinned. "Thought you, me,
and Charlie would get Brundage's
body outa the house.
This here's Mr. Becker; he
got another problem. Mr.
Becker, meet Cookie Coogan."
The Sheriff joined the procession,
pausing only once to
inquire into Sol's predicament.
He described the hitchhiker
incident, but Coogan
listened stoically. He murmured
something about the
Troopers, and shuffled alongside
the puffing fat man.
Sol soon realized that their
destination was a barber shop.
Dawes cupped his hands
over the plate glass and
peered inside. Gold letters on
the glass advertised: HAIRCUT
SHAVE & MASSAGE
PARLOR. He reported: "Nobody
in the shop. Must be
upstairs."
The
fat man rang the
bell. It was a while before an
answer came.
It was a reedy woman in a
housecoat, her hair in curlers,
her eyes red and swollen.
"Now, now," Dawes said
gently. "Don't you take on
like that, Mrs. Brundage. You
heard the charges. It hadda
be this way."
"My poor Vincent," she
sobbed.
"Better let us up," the
Sheriff said kindly. "No use
just lettin' him lay there,
Mrs. Brundage."
"He didn't mean no harm,"
the woman snuffled. "He was
just purely ornery, Vincent
was. Just plain mean stubborn."
"The law's the law," the
fat man sighed.
Sol couldn't hold himself
in.
"What law? Who's dead?
How did it happen?"
Dawes looked at him disgustedly.
"Now is it any of your business? I mean, is it?"
"I don't know," Sol said
miserably.
"You better stay out of
this," the Sheriff warned.
"This is a local matter, young
man. You better stay in the
shop while we go up."
They filed past him and the
crying Mrs. Brundage.
When they were out of
sight, Sol pleaded with her.
"What happened? How did
your husband die?"
"Please ..."
"You must tell me! Was it
something to do with Armagon?
Do you dream about the
place, too?"
She was shocked at the
question. "Of course!"
"And your husband? Did
he have the same dream?"
Fresh tears resulted. "Can't
you leave me alone?" She
turned her back. "I got things
to do. You can make yourself
comfortable—" She indicated
the barber chairs, and left
through the back door.
Sol looked after her, and
then ambled over to the first
chair and slipped into the
high seat. His reflection in
the mirror, strangely gray in
the dim light, made him
groan. His clothes were a
mess, and he needed a shave.
If only Brundage had been
alive ...
He leaped out of the chair
as voices sounded behind the
door. Dawes was kicking it
open with his foot, his arms
laden with two rather large
feet, still encased in bedroom
slippers. Charlie was at the
other end of the burden,
which appeared to be a middle-aged
man in pajamas. The
Sheriff followed the trio up
with a sad, undertaker expression.
Behind him came Mrs.
Brundage, properly weeping.
"We'll take him to the funeral
parlor," Dawes said,
breathing hard. "Weighs a
ton, don't he?"
"What killed him?" Sol
said.
"Heart attack."
The fat man chuckled.
The tableau was grisly. Sol
looked away, towards the
comfortingly mundane atmosphere
of the barber shop. But
even the sight of the thick-padded
chairs, the shaving
mugs on the wall, the neat
rows of cutting instruments,
seemed grotesque and morbid.
"Listen," Sol said, as they
went through the doorway.
"About my car—"
The Sheriff turned and regarded
him lugubriously.
"Your car ? Young man, ain't
you got no respect ?"
Sol swallowed hard and fell
silent. He went outside with
them, the woman slamming
the barber-shop door behind
him. He waited in front of
the building while the men
toted away the corpse to some
new destination.
He
took a walk.
The town was just coming
to life. People were strolling
out of their houses, commenting
on the weather, chuckling
amiably about local affairs.
Kids on bicycles were beginning
to appear, jangling the
little bells and hooting to
each other. A woman, hanging
wash in the back yard,
called out to him, thinking
he was somebody else.
He found a little park, no
more than twenty yards in
circumference, centered
around a weatherbeaten monument
of some unrecognizable
military figure. Three
old men took their places on
the bench that circled the
General, and leaned on their
canes.
Sol was a civil engineer.
But he made like a reporter.
"Pardon me, sir." The old
man, leathery-faced, with a
fine yellow moustache, looked
at him dumbly. "Have you
ever heard of Armagon?"
"You a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Thought so."
Sol repeated the question.
"Course I did. Been goin'
there ever since I was a kid.
Night-times, that is."
"How—I mean, what kind
of place is it?"
"Said you're a stranger?"
"Yes."
"Then 'tain't your business."
That was that.
He left the park, and wandered
into a thriving luncheonette.
He tried questioning
the man behind the counter,
who merely snickered and
said: "You stayin' with the
Dawes, ain't you? Better ask
Willie, then. He knows the
place better than anybody."
He asked about the execution,
and the man stiffened.
"Don't think I can talk
about that. Fella broke one of
the Laws; that's about it.
Don't see where you come
into it."
At eleven o'clock, he returned
to the Dawes residence,
and found Mom in the
kitchen, surrounded by the
warm nostalgic odor of home-baked
bread. She told him
that her husband had left a
message for the stranger, informing
him that the State
Police would be around to get
his story.
He waited in the house,
gloomily turning the pages of
the local newspaper, searching
for references to Armagon.
He found nothing.
At eleven-thirty, a brown-faced
State Trooper came to
call, and Sol told his story.
He was promised nothing,
and told to stay in town until
he was contacted again by
the authorities.
Mom fixed him a light
lunch, the greatest feature of
which was some hot biscuits
she plucked out of the oven.
It made him feel almost normal.
He wandered around the
town some more after lunch,
trying to spark conversation
with the residents.
He learned little.
At
five-thirty, he returned
to the Dawes house, and was
promptly leaped upon by
little Sally.
"Hi! Hi! Hi!" she said,
clutching his right leg and
almost toppling him over.
"We had a party in school. I
had chocolate cake. You goin'
to stay with us?"
"Just another night," Sol
told her, trying to shake the
girl off. "If it's okay with
your folks. They haven't
found my car yet."
"Sally!" Mom was peering
out of the screen door. "You
let Mr. Becker alone and go
wash. Your Pa will be home
soon."
"Oh, pooh," the girl said,
her pigtails swinging. "Do
you got a girlfriend, mister?"
"No." Sol struggled towards
the house with her
dead weight on his leg.
"Would you mind? I can't
walk."
"Would you be my boyfriend?"
"Well, we'll talk about it.
If you let go my leg."
Inside the house, she said:
"We're having pot roast. You
stayin'?"
"Of course Mr. Becker's
stayin'," Mom said. "He's our
guest."
"That's very kind of you,"
Sol said. "I really wish you'd
let me pay something—"
"Don't want to hear another
word about pay."
Mr. Dawes
came home an
hour later, looking tired.
Mom pecked him lightly on
the forehead. He glanced at
the evening paper, and then
spoke to Sol.
"Hear you been asking
questions, Mr. Becker."
Sol nodded, embarrassed.
"Guess I have. I'm awfully
curious about this Armagon
place. Never heard of anything
like it before."
Dawes grunted. "You ain't
a reporter?"
"Oh, no. I'm an engineer. I
was just satisfying my own
curiosity."
"Uh-huh." Dawes looked
reflective. "You wouldn't be
thinkin' about writing us up
or anything. I mean, this is a
pretty private affair."
"Writing it up?" Sol
blinked. "I hadn't thought of
it. But you'll have to admit—it's
sure interesting."
"Yeah," Dawes said narrowly.
"I guess it would be."
"Supper!" Mom called.
After the meal, they spent
a quiet evening at home. Sally
went to bed, screaming her
reluctance, at eight-thirty.
Mom, dozing in the big chair
near the fireplace, padded upstairs
at nine. Then Dawes
yawned widely, stood up, and
said goodnight at quarter-of-ten.
He paused in the doorway
before leaving.
"I'd think about that," he
said. "Writing it up, I mean.
A lot of folks would think
you were just plum crazy."
Sol laughed feebly. "I
guess they would at that."
"Goodnight," Dawes said.
"Goodnight."
He read Sally's copy of Treasure Island for about
half an hour. Then he undressed,
made himself comfortable
on the sofa, snuggled
under the soft blanket
that Mom had provided, and
shut his eyes.
He reviewed the events of
the day before dropping off
to sleep. The troublesome
Sally. The strange dream
world of Armagon. The visit
to the barber shop. The removal
of Brundage's body.
The conversations with the
townspeople. Dawes' suspicious
attitude ...
Then sleep came.
He
was flanked by marble
pillars, thrusting towards
a high-domed ceiling.
The room stretched long
and wide before him, the
walls bedecked in stunning
purple draperies.
He whirled at the sound of
footsteps, echoing stridently
on the stone floor. Someone
was running towards him.
It was Sally, pigtails
streaming out behind her, the
small body wearing a flowing
white toga. She was shrieking,
laughing as she skittered
past him, clutching a gleaming
gold helmet.
He called out to her, but
she was too busy outdistancing
her pursuer. It was Sheriff
Coogan, puffing and huffing,
the metal-and-gold cloth
uniform ludicrous on his
lanky frame.
"Consarn kid!" he wheezed.
"Gimme my hat!"
Mom was following him,
her stout body regal in scarlet
robes. "Sally! You give
Sir Coogan his helmet! You
hear?"
"Mrs. Dawes!" Sol said.
"Why, Mr. Becker! How
nice to see you again! Pa! Pa! Look who's here!"
Willie Dawes appeared. No! Sol thought. This was King Dawes; nothing else
could explain the magnificence
of his attire.
"Yes," Dawes said craftily.
"So I see. Welcome to Armagon,
Mr. Becker."
"Armagon?" Sol gaped.
"Then this is the place
you've been dreaming about?"
"Yep," the King said. "And
now you're in it, too."
"Then I'm only dreaming!"
Charlie, the fat man,
clumsy as ever in his robes of
State, said: "So that's the
snooper, eh?"
"Yep," Dawes chuckled.
"Think you better round up
the Knights."
Sol said: "The Knights?"
"Exelution! Exelution!"
Sally shrieked.
"Now wait a minute—"
Charlie shouted.
Running feet, clanking of
armor. Sol backed up against
a pillar. "Now look here.
You've gone far enough—"
"Not quite," said the King.
The Knights stepped forward.
"Wait!" Sol screamed.
Familiar faces, under shining
helmets, moved towards
him; the tips of sharp-pointed
spears gleaming wickedly.
And Sol Becker wondered—would
he ever awake?
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prime Difference by Alan Edward Nourse.
Relevant chunks:
PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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"George Faircloth, a husband who has an eight-year marriage with Marge Faircloth, is unsatisfied with his wife as he thinks she is annoying and unbearable. He desires but cannot divorce her as the law and society are critical of the divorce. His colleague, Harry Folsom, suggests he get an illegal Ego Prime, a technology that can produce a human duplicate possessing all the human features and functions, after he becomes fed up with his wife after a fight over his new secretary. He goes to the black market, goes through all the examinations needed for the technology, and buys a Super Deluxe Prime, George Prime, to hide in his workshop in the garage. The workshop is his sanctuary that he keeps for years after a long fight with Marge, a place where Marge cannot go in. He sets up George Prime and orders it to pretend him whenever he goes out to have some extramarital affairs with women in his office. George Prime does an excellent job on that as it behaves completely identical to George Faircloth, except that it gives Marge Faircloth more pleasure than George Faircloth does. At first, George Faircloth enjoys the freedom of playing around with women and not having to worry about Marge’s hysteria. But after a while, as he realizes that Marge has been more mellow and sweet whenever he is at home, catching George Prime on the street once when it is not supposed to be outside according to his order, he starts to suspect whether his choice is correct or not. One day, he leaves his date and comes home early, seeing George Prime have sexual affairs with Marge. Gripped by the anger, he tries to recall George Prime coming back to the garage, but it doesn’t respond due to the lack of the first logical opportunity for it to return. After that, through the conversation with George Prime, he realizes that things are out of his control as he cannot decide specifically what George Prime will do. Even worse, he finds out that his money is spent through the signature of George Prime as their signatures both have legal effects, and that he cannot call the police to fix it as he couldn’t explain the situation of illegal George Prime. George Prime and Marge Faircloth leave for Bermuda with his money. Marge comes home when he feels desperate in his house and comforts him. He soon realizes that it is not Marge Faircloth but Marge Prime, his wife’s duplicate and that his wife had already found out his trick long before. In the end, George Faircloth lives happily with Marge Prime, and Marge Faircloth lives happily with George Prime. Both of them are satisfied with the duplicates as they would satisfy their needs in the marriage.",
"The main character is George Faircloth. He has been married to his wife, Marge, for eight years, and he is tired of her and their relationship. He describes her as emotional and grumpy. He also calls her jealous and brings up the story of when she fought with him because of his new female secretary. His friend Harry Folsom suggests buying an Ego Prime - an android that fully resembles the person it was built after, including the feature of speech and mannerisms. The sale of this mechanism is heavily regulated by the law - having a personal Ego Prime with open circuits is illegal, but George feels desperate. He comes to a four-storied warehouse near Broadway meets a little man, a consultant who, after a quick chat, sends him to a laboratory where they can copy George’s appearance and behavioral patterns. Two hours later, Faircloth meets his android duplicate George Prime, who later gets delivered and stored in the big closet in George's workshop - Marge never comes here. After supper, he switches on George Prime, lets him go to the house, and leaves for a date. During the following weeks George leaves at night after switching with his duplicate. He usually uses the android several days a week and puts him back in the workshop closet when he returns. Soon George realizes that his wife has become happier and calmer. George Prime claims that he was simply paying attention to her, listening - that’s why she changed. George thanks him. The next evening, Faircloth unexpectedly meets the duplicate at the liquor store and becomes angry, but George Prime says that he had to get bourbon for Marge and was in no position to refuse. Faircloth decides to stay home the next night and has a strange conversation with his wife, after which he decides to go to bed. The next night, he activates George Prime and goes to the movies alone. Once back, Faircloth sees his wife and the duplicate kiss. He walks to the workshop and pushes the recall button waiting for the android to come, but George Prime appears only at dawn. The next morning, George gets a call from the bank and learns that someone who appeared to be him has been cashing checks for the last weeks, and now his account is empty. He calls one of the city travel agencies and learns that George Prime just bought two tickets to Bermuda. Apparently, Marge has spotted the substitution and convinced the android to purchase the tickets. George comes back home, but no one is there. Suddenly his wife opens the front door, her arms full of groceries. She tells him that she figured out everything but was not planning on running away with George Prime. She sent him back to the factory. George becomes suspicious and soon understands that it is a duplicate of Marge standing in front of him - his real wife did run away. \n",
"The story follows a couple, the Faircloths. It starts out with George being tired of his marriage, and he wants to find ways to enjoy his life more. The story is narrated in first person, so we get much better insight into George’s thoughts. He describes his marriage as tiresome and draining, and says that he would have liked to divorce his wife a long time ago. He tries to flirt with different women, but his wife finds out and that just leads to more and more fighting. One day, one of his coworkers tells him about a new technology that allows him to buy a perfect robot replica of himself. George doubts buying the technology, because it is illegal, but then decides to do it. The robot he buys is a perfect replica of himself, and can be completely controlled by George. George uses the robot to stay at home with his wife while he goes out with different women. George is very happy with how his life is going, and he also starts to notice that his wife is much happier than before. Slowly, Prime George starts to defy George’s orders until one day he realizes that Prime George bought two one-way tickets to Bermuda. George gets worried that his wife ran off with the android, but then she enters the house as if nothing happened and tells George that she wasn’t going to run off with the android. When they embrace, George realizes that he was hugging an android replica of his wife, and he seems okay with that. ",
"The story introduces Goerge Faircloth, husband to Marge Faircloth. The two live together and have been in a marriage for eight years. The story is told through George who explains that he has been desperate to find a way out of their marriage. He finds Marge complaining, whining too much and picking up on every little detail he does that does not go her way. Because of the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, divorce was never an option for them as taxes charged on it are too high.At work, George envies his co-worker, Harry Folsom, who is equally not in the happiest relationship but is allowed to gets away with traveling away from his wife. Marge is easily jealous. George has an affair with his new secretary, Jeree, which Marge finds out about and calls George out over dinner. The next morning, Harry advises George to get an “Ego Prime,” a clone android of one’s self that looks and behaves just like the real person. This “Ego Prime,” however, seems to only be accessible to highly respected individuals with reputable titles. Harry recommends an agent from the black market to George. The agent recommends the Utility model but George wants the Super Deluxe Model. George’s measurements are taken and after the whole process, gets to meet “George Prime.” The android is delivered to George’s home along with a remote. George has manipulated Marge beforehand as to not make her check upon the garage, which is where he plans to hide George Prime. The first week George Prime was put to use, George was barely at home, hanging out with not only Jeree but also other women. When he came back home ready for work, he would turn George Prime off and get to work. As time went on, George noticed something different: Marge became softer, nicer, cooking him dinner with music he likes. George Prime tells him he has just been telling her the right things. George Prime starts getting out of control as he makes his own decisions like going to the liquor store or spending intimate time with Marge overnight. George unexpectedly starts to crave Marge and cancels on his date. As he gets a call from the bank informing him about checks that were made to his account, he realizes Marge has known his tactic all along, and has been using the android to get what she wants, a trip to Bermuda. He finds no way out as calling the police would out get him into prison because of the prime being illegal. He comes back home to Marge, who expected would already be on the trip. She tells him she knew all along and realized she never fully appreciated the real him. From hugging her and feeling the depression button under her hair, he realizes Marge has also been using a Prime. He is, however, satisfied with her prime as she seems to do and say all the right things.\n"
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51321
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PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
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What is the relationship between George Faircloth and Marge Faircloth?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prime Difference by Alan Edward Nourse.
Relevant chunks:
PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
Question:
What is the relationship between George Faircloth and Marge Faircloth?
Answer:
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[
"George Faircloth and Marge Faircloth are husband and wife. They have married for 8 years. Their relationship is toxic and unsatisfying. George is fed up with Marge’s constant complaints, grievance, and crying. Marge is unsatisfied with George’s inattention to her and his possible affairs with women in his office, so she often spies on George’s office life, which irritates George more. They are constantly in fight. Their way of communicating with each other is to attack and fight, and they haven’t seen each other carefully and sweetly for a long time. Their relationship is to conquer and be conquered repeatedly, fighting all the time.",
"George and Marge Faircloth have been married for eight years. George claims that their life is full of scandals and distrust. They fight ninety percent of the time. Marge is often complaining, crying, or criticizing George. She is jealous, and once when a new secretary started working with George, she threw a tantrum and spoiled the evening. Marge doesn’t get enough attention from him and knows that he can be indecent. They both do not enjoy living together, and George finds it easy to buy the Prime android and spend his evenings with his female colleagues. At the end, Marge and George end up with the android duplicates of their spouse and feel much happier. ",
"The relationship between George and Marge is very tense. It seems as if in the past they had a great relationship, but now they just fight. George states that they fight almost every night, and that it is very hard for them to spend time together without there being something that Marge complains about. It is also clear that George doesn’t try to make Marge happy anymore. Both of them quit the relationship and instead bought prime androids so that they could have more freedom outside of the marriage. ",
"George Faircloth and Marge Faircloth are a couple that have been engaged for eight years. They are trapped in an unhappy marriage where George feels trapped by a wife, who although he finds stunning, does not stop complaining, crying and whining about the most unnecessary issues of their coupled life. The two have tried to make the marriage better but never yet succeeded. They were never able to consider divorce as an option because the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968 charges incredibly high taxes on the process. Marge is also a jealous wife which makes George feel even more suffocated. Marge finds out that George has an affair with his secretary, Jeree. In the story, George finds a solution to this unhappy marriage by purchasing an Ego Prime, an android clone of himself that looks and behaves like him, so that he can go on about his life as the android deals with the coupled life for him. In the first stage, this android brings him lots of joy as he is able to meet with his secretary and other women as he pleases. Then, as he notices that his wife gets more tender and more caring, he starts appreciating and missing her more. By the end of the story, he finds out that Marge knew his trick all along and that she booked herself a trip to Bermuda with his money. Marge also had a Prime of herself, who is the real person George has in fact fallen for.\n"
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51321
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PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
|
What is the significance of the “Prime” technology?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prime Difference by Alan Edward Nourse.
Relevant chunks:
PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
Question:
What is the significance of the “Prime” technology?
Answer:
|
[
"The Ego Prime is a technology that produces a robotic duplicate of a person. This duplicate is based on a neuro-pantograph with a humanlike body and soul. The duplicate is identical to a real person, including the habits, thought processes, physiological functions, or even the handwritten legal signature that one person may have. The only difference between the real person and one’s duplicate is that the duplicate has a finger-depression button hidden underneath the hair above the ear. Throughout the story, George, a husband who has been tired of his wife, buys a George Prime, the duplicate of himself, to deal with his wife and have sexual affairs with other women around his office. However, he finds out that George Prime leaves with her wife, and his wife, Marge Faircloth, sends her duplicate Marge Prime to accompany her, just as he did to her. The exchange of their duplicates to escape from the unsatisfying marriage contributes to most of the story. Prime technology plays a significant role as duplicates can satisfy human needs better than a natural person. Due to this characteristic of being able to meet one’s demand by their logical inferences and inability to feel annoyed, the duplicates of both sides become the ideal mates for each person, both George and Marge, ending the story with both of them living with the Primes. Without Prime Technology, the story would not have developed.",
"The Prime technology allows George to spend evenings with his other romantic partners without maddening or upsetting his wife. He leaves his duplicate created with the Prime technology with her while spending his nights in other places. She is not supposed to notice the substitution, but eventually, George realizes that she did. She uses this knowledge to convince George Prime to buy two tickets to Bermuda. Apparently, she enjoys George Prime’s company and feels happier with him than with her real husband. George, too, enjoys spending time with the duplicate of his wife at the end of the story, claiming that this android is a dream in comparison to all the other women he knows. The Prime technology practically ends the relationship between George and Marge but allows them to get better partners. ",
"The prime technology is one of the most important parts of the story. It allows George to get a break from a draining marriage. The technology allows people to make android replicas that can be completely controlled by their owners, and that is completely the same as the owner. George uses this technology to make a copy of himself that keeps his wife busy and happy. While the android is with his wife, he takes advantage to meet with many different women that he couldn’t have met before. Slowly, the android starts to stretch George’s commands, and George realizes that he has to turn the android off. Before he can do this, the android runs off with his wife. George realizes that his wife also had a prime replica. ",
"The “Prime” is a technology that allows an individual to create an android clone of themselves that looks and behaves like them. This can be used for many intentions, in this story’s case, to get some time off a marriage that no longer brings joy to the parties involved. The technology is said to have been started by Hunyadi who invented the “Neuro-pantograph.” Larger technology enterprises then bought the model to modify and improve it further. The “Ego Prime” by “Ego Prime, Inc.” became so popular that the wives all over the country caught up with what the technology was and what its purpose was for. That is when black markets for the same technology started, which is where George gets his Prime. The Primes have different levels of model specificity ranging from the Utility model to the Super Deluxe model, which is the one George requests. The individual has to go through measurements and be under NP microprobes to create their Prime. The Prime produced has remote controls and has neurological pathways that are identical to its owner ingrained in them, allowing them to behave like the owner. All physicialities are identical except for finger-depression above the Prime’s ear which if clicked, would end the android.\n"
] |
51321
|
PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
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How is the theme of marriage explored throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prime Difference by Alan Edward Nourse.
Relevant chunks:
PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
Question:
How is the theme of marriage explored throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story starts with a husband, George Faircloth, who is unsatisfied with his marriage, trying to escape from his wife without communicating with her. Throughout the story, he uses Prime Technology, a technology that can produce an identical duplicate of a human, to deal with his wife’s complaints and other annoying interactions with him. However, when he finds out that George Prime, his duplicate, gets along better with his wife than him and finally leaves him behind together, he realizes what he has done wrong. When he feels desperate, his wife’s duplicate comes to stay with him, and he finally finds his wife’s duplicate better than his wife. The central theme of the story is the marriage relationship. The beginning of the story reveals a marriage failure where both the husband and the wife are not satisfied with each other after years-long marriage. Their solutions are not to communicate with each other or change for the better but to escape from each other through Prime technology. In the middle of the story, where George Faircloth once finds his wife adorable again due to George Prime’s effort, it shows the importance of communication and mutual support in the marriage, which is lacking in their relationship. The ending of the story, where both of them live with the duplicates of each other, indicates that a good relationship in marriage is to listen to and satisfy what each other needs with proper communication.",
"George Faircloth deems his marriage unhappy because it’s permanent. He doesn’t enjoy spending all his time with the same woman, even though he initially loved Marge. He is exhausted and theoretically would be happy to get a divorce. His despair leads to the events that follow his inner monologue. He buys an android that resembles him and activates him when he wants to meet a woman or simply leave the house for a bit. At the end, Marge and George Prime empty Faircloth’s accounts and go to Bermuda. They are happy together. George himself enjoys living with Marge’s android because she seems like a dream to him, a perfect woman. George and Marge both get too tired of their unhappy, imperfect marriage and choose ideal partners instead.",
"Marriage is depicted as an awful thing. George hates his marriage, but he can’t end it because there are laws that would have allowed his wife to take a lot of his money. George says that he constantly fights with his wife, and that he finds it very hard to spend time with her due to her jealousy and other bad attributes. Marriage is depicted as something that people must do, but isn’t taken seriously, as George very easily cheats on his wife with other women from the office. ",
"One of the central themes explored in “Prime Difference” is the concept of marriage. The story revolves around a couple, George Faircloth and Marge Faircloth, trapped in an eight year long unhappy marriage. Marge complains, whines and cries too much for George. Equally, George does not fulfill his potential in being a good, supportive husband either. After trying to fix it in every way possible, George is hopeless and gives in to the idea of getting an “Ego Prime,” a android clone of him that would look and act like him, allowing him to lead a joyful parallel life as the android directly deals with his wife.\n\nFirst, the story gives a social commentary on the concept of marriage. With the couple being trapped in such a long unhappy marriage, even after trying to fix it yet not finding any way out of it, the story showcases the unnatural aspect of marriage as a social construct. Two individuals are bound to live life together but yet are not able to get out of it because of an imaginary societal contract they agreed upon and societal norms that would view such action as dishonorable. Instead of finding other ways other than a divorce, which they could not afford, to fix it, they thus put up with living together unhappily. This leaves the reader questioning whether marriage should truly limit two individuals’ freedom to this extent.\n\nThe story also gives a commentary on the nature of a good marriage. As the story goes on, George’s Ego Prime starts to turn Marge into a softer, nicer woman, who George starts to appreciate more. George Prime gives credit to this change in behavior to his choice of saying the right things, in other words, the things Marge wants to hear. Equally, when George finds out the Marge he has been falling for again is merely a Prime too, he still accepts and wants her as she makes him feel appreciated. These intentions make the readers question the selfishness behind the concept of marriage. Do we agree to a marital contract purely for our own selfishness of wanting to be serviced and on some level, praised? Are the nice actions we do for our partners merely to selfishly receive those same actions back?\n"
] |
51321
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PRIME DIFFERENCE
By ALAN E. NOURSE
Illustrated by SCHOENHEER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Being two men rolled out of one would solve my problems—but which one would I be?
I suppose that every guy reaches a point once in his lifetime when he gets one hundred and forty per cent fed up with his wife.
Understand now—I've got nothing against marriage or any thing like that. Marriage is great. It's a good old red-blooded American Institution. Except that it's got one defect in it big enough to throw a cat through, especially when you happen to be married to a woman like Marge—
It's so permanent .
Oh, I'd have divorced Marge in a minute if we'd been living in the Blissful 'Fifties—but with the Family Solidarity Amendment of 1968, and all the divorce taxes we have these days since the women got their teeth into politics, to say nothing of the Aggrieved Spouse Compensation Act, I'd have been a pauper for the rest of my life if I'd tried it. That's aside from the social repercussions involved.
You can't really blame me for looking for another way out. But a man has to be desperate to try to buy himself an Ego Prime.
So, all right, I was desperate. I'd spent eight years trying to keep Marge happy, which was exactly seven and a half years too long.
Marge was a dream to look at, with her tawny hair and her sulky eyes and a shape that could set your teeth chattering—but that was where the dream stopped.
She had a tongue like a #10 wood rasp and a list of grievances long enough to paper the bedroom wall. When she wasn't complaining, she was crying, and when she wasn't crying, she was pointing out in chilling detail exactly where George Faircloth fell short as a model husband, which happened to be everywhere. Half of the time she had a "beastly headache" (for which I was personally responsible) and the other half she was sore about something, so ninety-nine per cent of the time we got along like a couple of tomcats in a packing case.
Maybe we just weren't meant for each other. I don't know. I used to envy guys like Harry Folsom at the office. His wife is no joy to live with either, but at least he could take a spin down to Rio once in a while with one of the stenographers and get away with it.
I knew better than to try. Marge was already so jealous that I couldn't even smile at the company receptionist without a twinge of guilt. Give Marge something real to howl about, and I'd be ready for the Rehab Center in a week.
But I'd underestimated Marge. She didn't need anything real, as I found out when Jeree came along.
Business was booming and the secretaries at the office got shuffled around from time to time. Since I had an executive-type job, I got an executive-type secretary. Her name was Jeree and she was gorgeous. As a matter of fact, she was better than gorgeous. She was the sort of secretary every businessman ought to have in his office. Not to do any work—just to sit there.
Jeree was tall and dark, and she could convey more without saying anything than I ever dreamed was possible. The first day she was there, she conveyed to me very clearly that if I cared to supply the opportunity, she'd be glad to supply the motive.
That night, I could tell that Marge had been thinking something over during the day. She let me get the first bite of dinner halfway to my mouth, and then she said, "I hear you got a new secretary today."
I muttered something into my coffee cup and pretended not to hear.
Marge turned on her Accusing Look #7. "I also hear that she's five-foot-eight and tapes out at 38-25-36 and thinks you're handsome."
Marge had quite a spy system.
"She couldn't be much of a secretary," she added.
"She's a perfectly good secretary," I blurted, and kicked myself mentally. I should have known Marge's traps by then.
Marge exploded. I didn't get any supper, and she was still going strong at midnight. I tried to argue, but when Marge got going, there was no stopping her. I had my ultimatum, as far as Jeree was concerned.
Harry Folsom administered the coup de grace at coffee next morning.
"What you need is an Ego Prime," he said with a grin. "Solve all your problems. I hear they work like a charm."
I set my coffee cup down. Bells were ringing in my ears. "Don't be ridiculous. It's against the law. Anyway, I wouldn't think of such a thing. It's—it's indecent."
Harry shrugged. "Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it's fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you've got the right contacts. And I've got a friend who knows a guy—"
Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.
As I said, a guy gets fed up.
And maybe opportunity would only knock once.
And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.
It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation's housewives got wind of just what their product was.
From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.
The law didn't leave a man much leeway.
But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.
Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.
"Ah, yes," the little man said. "Mr. Faircloth. We've been expecting you."
I didn't like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. "I've been told you can supply me with a—"
He coughed. "Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible." He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. "Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—" He wiped his hands on his trousers. "Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?"
I assumed he was just being polite. You didn't come to the back door for Utility models.
"Or perhaps you'd require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—"
I was shaking my head. "I want a Super Deluxe model," I told him.
He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn't want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but I would clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I'd left there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you? Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous. I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be something ."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. I'd never managed to warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. " What are you doing out on the street? "
He gave me my martyred look. "Just buying some bourbon. You were out."
"But you're not supposed to be off the premises—"
"Marge asked me to come. I couldn't tell her I was sorry, but her husband wouldn't let me, could I?"
"Well, certainly not—"
"You want me to keep her happy, don't you? You don't want her to get suspicious."
"No, but suppose somebody saw us together! If she ever got a hint—"
"I'm sorry," George Prime said contritely. "It seemed the right thing to do. You would have done it. At least that's what my judgment center maintained. We had quite an argument."
"Well, tell your judgment center to use a little sense," I snapped. "I don't want it to happen again."
The next night, I stayed home, even though it was Tuesday night. I was beginning to get worried. Of course, I did have complete control—I could snap George Prime off any time I wanted, or even take him in for a complete recircuiting—but it seemed a pity. He was doing such a nice job.
Marge was docile as a kitten, even more so than before. She sympathized with my hard day at the office and agreed heartily that the boss, despite all appearances, was in reality a jabbering idiot. After dinner, I suggested a movie, but Marge gave me an odd sort of look and said she thought it would be much nicer to spend the evening at home by the fire.
I'd just gotten settled with the paper when she came into the living room and sat down beside me. She was wearing some sort of filmy affair I'd never laid eyes on before, and I caught a whiff of my favorite perfume.
"Georgie?" she said.
"Uh?"
"Do you still love me?"
I set the paper down and stared at her. "How's that? Of course I still—"
"Well, sometimes you don't act much like it."
"Mm. I guess I've—uh—got an awful headache tonight." Damn that perfume!
"Oh," said Marge.
"In fact, I thought I'd turn in early and get some sleep—"
"Sleep," said Marge. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice. Now I knew that things were out of hand.
The next evening, I activated George Prime and caught the taxi at the corner, but I called Ruby and broke my date with her. I took in an early movie alone and was back by ten o'clock. I left the cab at the corner and walked quietly up the path toward the garage.
Then I stopped. I could see Marge and George Prime through the living room windows.
George Prime was kissing my wife the way I hadn't kissed her in eight long years. It made my hair stand on end. And Marge wasn't exactly fighting him off, either. She was coming back for more. After a little, the lights went off.
George Prime was a Super Deluxe model, all right.
I dashed into the workshop and punched the recall button as hard as I could, swearing under my breath. How long had this been going on? I punched the button again, viciously, and waited.
George Prime didn't come out.
It was plenty cold out in the workshop that night and I didn't sleep a wink. About dawn, out came George Prime, looking like a man with a four-day hangover.
Our conversation got down to fundamentals. George Prime kept insisting blandly that, according to my own directions, he was to pick the first logical opportunity to come out when I buzzed, and that was exactly what he'd done.
I was furious all the way to work. I'd take care of this nonsense, all right. I'd have George Prime rewired from top to bottom as soon as the laboratory could take him.
But I never phoned the laboratory. The bank was calling me when I got to the office. They wanted to know what I planned to do about that check of mine that had just bounced.
"What check?" I asked.
"The one you wrote to cash yesterday—five hundred dollars—against your regular account, Mr. Faircloth."
The last I'd looked, I'd had about three thousand dollars in that account. I told the man so rather bluntly.
"Oh, no, sir. That is, you did until last week. But all these checks you've been cashing have emptied the account."
He flashed the checks on the desk screen. My signature was on every one of them.
"What about my special account?" I'd learned long before that an account Marge didn't know about was sound rear-guard strategy.
"That's been closed out for two weeks."
I hadn't written a check against that account for over a year! I glared at the ceiling and tried to think things through.
I came up with a horrible thought.
Marge had always had her heart set on a trip to Bermuda. Just to get away from it all, she'd say. A second honeymoon.
I got a list of travel agencies from the business directory and started down them. The third one I tried had a pleasant tenor voice. "No, sir, not Mrs. Faircloth. You bought two tickets. One way. Champagne flight to Bermuda."
"When?" I choked out.
"Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o'clock—"
I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn't know what they'd given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—
Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I'd read about. And she'd known all about George Prime.
For how long?
When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn't in his closet. And Marge wasn't in the house.
They were gone.
I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn't very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.
Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.
I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.
My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.
It was indecent.
Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. "Why, darling! You're home early!"
I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, "You're still here!"
"Of course. Where did you think I'd be?"
"But I thought—I mean the ticket office—"
She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. "You didn't really think I'd go running off with something out of a lab, did you?"
"Then—you knew?"
"Certainly I knew, silly. You didn't do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace."
"Bermuda," I said.
And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.
"Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn't be," she said. "He was like you, but he wasn't you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before...."
I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She'd never been more beautiful. "But what did you do with him?"
"I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let's not talk about that any more. We've got more interesting things to discuss."
Maybe we had, but we didn't waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I'd once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—
I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.
That Marge always had been a sly one.
I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.
Marge probably thought she'd really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.
As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.
She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there's nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.
A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.
One of these days, we'll take that second honeymoon. But I think we'll go to Hawaii.
|
Describe the setting of the story.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Growing up on Big Muddy by Charles V. De Vet.
Relevant chunks:
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"Kaiser left Earth on a mothership Soscites II, that soon, finishing its planet-mapping tour, approached a planet that the man named Big Muddy. He left the spacecraft in a small scout ship - which had a pilot chair, a communicator, and a bunk - and landed on the muddy surface. The other seven scouts got lost during the previous exploration of new worlds. It is wet, humid, and warm on Big muddy, constantly raining with different intensity. There is a wide sluggish river, which has the shape of a horseshoe, two hundred yards away from the scout and also a chain of hills. Farther, along the stream, there is a group of several hundred domed dwellings, built of mud blocks, packed with river weed and sand. Another group of seal-people lives near the riverbank in the opposite direction of Kaiser's first observational walk. ",
"The story is set on a planet that Kaiser has named the Big Muddy. It is extremely wet, warm, and humid. There is also a village of seal-people nearby, and they have huts alongside the river bank. Kaiser’s scout ship has places for controls and also to sleep. In the village, there are also round domes that were based on construction of a series of four arches in a circle. The climate also changes on the planet, which is why the seal-people change as time goes on. Although it rains a lot in general, there are seasons where it rains less than the others. This is evident because the domes are built by river weed, mud, and sand. Even though the seal-people do not know how to use fire, it is evident that there must be times where it rains less in order for them to build these domes. ",
"This story takes placed on Big Muddy. The current climate on this planet when Kaiser arrives is wet, humid and warm - and constantly raining. The landscape includes many river banks where the natives spend time, and the ground is often muddy and slippery. \n\nAlongside the riverbank, there are also two hundred dwellings. These dwellings - round domes - are constructed from bricks built from a dried combination of mud, river weed, and sand. The dome was built by constructing four arches ranging in a circle, with the roof forming the final layer. \n\n",
"The story is set on a planet in which there is little human presence. After Kaiser crashes on this planet, he is stuck on a small metal ship trying to fix it. The planet is described to be very rainy and humid, but it is also mentioned that the planet constantly changes weather. The weather can vary from very rainy and humid to very arid and sunny. The planet is inhabited by native seal-people. These natives live in settlements around the bank of a curling river, in small huts made from mud. The planet is also mentioned to have large foothills around the river. \n"
] |
51398
|
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
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What is the importance of the baby talk in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Growing up on Big Muddy by Charles V. De Vet.
Relevant chunks:
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
Question:
What is the importance of the baby talk in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The fact that Kaiser at some point uses baby-talk helps Sam and other members of the Soscites II team determine what exactly caused Kaiser’s symptoms and how it can analyze his emotions and use them to give his body what it needs. The main reason why the man uses baby-talk seems to be that he was most happy in his childhood which also underscores his alienation from people, that he is a loner. Kaiser went to space to run away from his wife and her brother, his colleagues respect him but do not like him, and none of them is Kaiser’s friend. He’s naturally unsociable and was happier when he was a kid. ",
"The baby talk that Kaiser experiences is important because it is the effect of the symbiote being in his body. Without the baby talk, the ship would not have accurately determined that there is a symbiote in his body. It also sets off the story, because Kaiser would otherwise believe that he is perfectly fine on the planet. Although he is confused by the baby talk, he does realize that it disappears later. It is an effect of the symbiote, trying to bring him back to a happier time in his life which was childhood. Without the baby talk, it would have been impossible for Kaiser and the rest of the ship to realize the symbiote. It also later directly affects how Kaiser makes the choices regarding the seal-people and how he eventually destroys the communication device to join them. ",
"The baby talk is important because it is a clear sign of the symbiote having entered Kaiser's system and adapting him. His other symptoms like changing color or having trouble keeping food down could have been reasoned to a flu or virus, so the baby talk symptom was an important distinction for the doctor and those aboard SS II to identify what was going on. \n\nAdditionally, the reason behind the baby talk appearing hinted at why Kaiser may have more easily given into staying on Big Muddy and transforming into the seal-life creatures. Sam had said the symbiote instilled baby talk back into Kaiser because it believed that Ksier was most happy when he was a child - and wanted to provide Kaiser with this happy state of mind. This, along with Kaiser's feeling lonely and tormented aboard the SS and on Earth respectively, makes sense why Kaiser might choose another way of life for himself and his happiness. ",
"The baby talk is one of the symptoms that Kaiser shows at the beginning of the story. While communicating with the ship, he sent the ship weird messages. These messages replicated how babies talk. The ship’s doctor told Kaiser that it was a symptom of the symbiote entering Kaiser’s body, and that the baby talk could be explained. The symbiote wanted Kaiser to feel happy, and it believed that Kaiser had been most happy when he was a baby, so the symbiote tried to replicate those feelings. Overall, the baby talk was the initial sign of the control that the symbiote would have over Kaiser and his body, eventually leading to Kaiser slowly turning into a seal-person."
] |
51398
|
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Growing up on Big Muddy by Charles V. De Vet.
Relevant chunks:
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Kaiser is a young man who was unhappily married and decided to join space service to escape his wife and her brother. He was on the mothership, Soscites II, that was finishing its planet-mapping tour. The team put him in a scout ship and sent him to the planet he calls Big Muddy. During the landing, the scout’s bottom bent inward and flattened the fuel tube. At some point, Kaiser finds himself lost because he doesn’t remember what was happening in the last hours, only the fact that he must fix the scout during the next few weeks. He reads the message tape with the mothership and learns that he had a swollen arm, a fever, periods of blankness, and in the middle of the exchange, he started using baby-talk. Now Kaiser feels better and asks for some information on fixing the scout from the mothership’s team. Then, he walks around the scout, looks at the “octopus” testing the environment of Big Muddy, and heads toward a sluggish river and native seal-people. They are short, with the body of a seal, thick arms, and thumbless hands, and have mammalian characteristics. The man spends some time observing them and then looks at their domed buildings. Soon the mothership informs Kaiser that he has probably been invaded by a symbiote, though it is not supposed to harm him. It’s adaptable and tried to give Kaiser what he emotionally desired. Hours later, the team adds that the symbiote can accurately gauge his feelings, and he needs to test this. Kaiser makes a shallow cut - it immediately heels, his sensory perception improves, and now he can control how humidity affects him. He spends a day trying to repair the scout and then leaves for a day walking trip. He meets another group of seal-people. They seem more advanced than the first ones. Kaiser sleeps in a tent and, in the morning, swims with the natives until one of them starts playfully drowning him. He comes back to his ship and realizes that his physical strength has improved. Kaiser manages to partially fix the metal bottom and report the events of the day to the mothership. They tell him that the natives probably have the symbiote and then order him to repair the ship as soon as possible. In the morning, they repeat that he needs to leave very soon, which puzzles Kaiser. The captain sends an angry message with the order to finish repairing the scout. Kaiser goes to the river and takes the communicator with him. The natives look almost human-like now and use syllabism. A female native invites him to the river, but Kaiser hears that the communicator received a message. He walks back and reads that the team has a suspicion the symbiote can alter Kaiser’s mind. The second group of seal-people was not more advanced - he just became more like them. The man destroys the communicator and follows the girl to the river. ",
"Kaiser is busy trying to figure out the strange communication from the tape in his hand, but he is also annoyed by the rainy climate outside. He tries to think back to the baby talk but finds it hard to even remember what he was doing here. Kaiser knows that he has to repair the scout ship, or else he will be stuck here forever. The mothership, Soscites II, has set itself into orbit around the Big Muddy ship, which is why he only has a month to repair the ship. The message he sends from himself is about the seal-people and repairing the scout ship, and the ship responds with a message about how this information has been given to Sam. He responds with a list of his symptoms, and the ship asks for more information. Kaiser wonders why some of his messages are sending in baby talk, but the ship says that everything is perfectly legible. However, after the last message, he does feel better and sends another one to the ship for more information. Kaiser dreams about his wife Helene and their loveless marriage, waking up in a cold sweat an hour later. He decides to go outside, observing how the octopus part of the scout ship is busy sending everything to the mothership. Kaiser goes to visit the seal-people again, and they chirp when he comes close. Some of the seal-people come up to him, but the smell of fish is too much for him to bear. He finds that they are a mindless lot and decides to explore the round domes. For the rest of the day, Kaiser tries to figure out how to fix his scout ship because the Soscites II sent little to no help. The ship tells him that he has been invaded by a symbiote, but it is not dangerous because the symbiote will die with Kaiser if he dies. It also explains the baby talk, as the symbiote was trying to give him what it thought he needed. It is revealed the crew does not like him much because he is intelligent and not prone to mistakes. Later, he accepts that he will live with the symbiote and goes to observe the seal-people again. This new group seems more advanced than the other, and they even give him seaweed as a gesture of friendship. Kaiser goes to swim the next day, and the locals are extremely friendly as they try to play with him in the water. When he goes back to his ship, he finds equipment and begins to put work into repairing the scout. The mothership sends him messages to come back, but they deliberately conceal information. He also finds out that the seal-people are becoming more human like now, and a female even stays to watch him repair. During his last communication with the ship, he smashes the communicator and joins the female as they run to the river bank to play. ",
"This story follows Kaiser in his scout ship as he is grounded upon Big Muddy. He is temporarily separated from his mother ship, Soscites II, as the mothership takes an orbit around the planet. Kaiser is grounded because his scout is broken, and he does not have the appropriate equipment to fix it. \n\nIn his communications log with the mother ship, it is revealed that Kaiser had fallen ill. After he recovered, he took a trip to observe the seal-people. They had been swimming and eating by the river bank and paused in curiosity as Kaiser approached. Alongside the riverbank lay a few hundred dwellings - round domes built with mud bricks. \n\nUpon receiving more information from the ship, Kaiser and the crew find out that the symbiote is harmless to humans. Any of his prior illnesses was perhaps the symbiote adjusting his body to the new environment and correcting any subsequent mistakes it may have made. In addition, the symbiote can only know what Kaiser wants by reading his mind. At this theory, the crew urged Kaiser to perform his own tests to see if it was true. He tested this theory by changing his body temperature and checking that the room temperature stayed the same, and confirmed it to be true. \n\nKaiser then took another trip, hoping to find more intelligent natives. He found a group of seal-people that seemed more intelligence in their actions and has less of an odor to them. The next morning, he went swimming with the seal-people and they crowded around him in a friendly manner. However, their overeagerness to play nearly caused Kaiser to drown, and so he headed back to the scout. There, he accidentally turned a sled and found the equipment. He was able to concentrate and fix part of the scout using his mind and tools. As he sent off the news to the ship, he read his messages. \n\nIt appears that Big Muddy undergoes two drastic seasonal changes - extreme moisture and aridity. As a result, the seal-people must be able to physically adapt in order to survive. SS II informs Kaiser that it is due to the natives also having symbiosis, and that all efforts should be devoted to fixing the scout and returning home. Though noting the urgency behind the messages, Kaiser still chose to take another trip to the river banks. This time, he noticed that the seal-people looked almost human and he could detect syllabism in their speech. \n\nIn a frantic last message from the ship, Kaiser learned that the symbiotes have already begun altering Kaiser in more sinister ways. His perceptions on finding seal-peole becoming more intelligent and human-like wasn't actually because of that, but because he himself was becoming more seal-like. The symbiote is able to alter his mind and physical state, and already has. After reading the message, Kaiser picked up a rock to destroy the device, and happily returned to the girl on river bank and they swam in the water. ",
"The story follows Kaiser, a human who gets stranded on a new planet. He is a part of a space expedition, and after his ship crash lands he only has one month to fix his scout ship and return to the large ship. He can communicate with the large ship using a typing system, and it is revealed that he has been communicating with the crew because he had been feeling sick. Kaiser also interacted with the natives of the planet, which are described to be seal-people. The ship’s doctor informed Kaiser that his symptoms most likely come from a symbiote which inhabited his body, but that there is no reason for concern, as the symbiotic relationship can help both the symbiote and Kaiser. Kaiser struggled with this news for a while, but then realized that it could be a good thing. The symbiote allowed Kaiser to control his feelings better, and even helped him physically. Kaiser then went on a journey to a new village of the natives in order to search for tools that could help him repair the ship. Here, he interacted very well with the natives, and felt happy doing so. After coming back, he realized that the symbiote was giving him extra strength and managed to repair the ship. When the ship told him to immediately come back, he started to doubt his desire to go back. He went back to the original village of the seal-people, taking with him a transportable communication device. He seemed to be very happy with the seal-people, having fun and interacting with females. The ship sent him a message telling him that there is a lot of urgency in his order for Kaiser to go up, as the symbiote was adapting his body and mind to the planet. Kaiser responded to this message by breaking the communication device and going back to the river with the seal-people. "
] |
51398
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Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
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What is the importance of the seal-people in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Growing up on Big Muddy by Charles V. De Vet.
Relevant chunks:
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
Question:
What is the importance of the seal-people in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Kaiser’s perception of the native groups of seal-people represents how his body is affected by the symbiote that has invaded his system. The first time the man sees them, he considers them mindless repulsive creatures with an unbearable odor and no proper communication system. The second meeting changes his opinion about them - now they seem more advanced in their demeanor and actions, friendlier, and their smell is less repugnant. This change in perception shows that Kaiser has already started changing, becoming more like them. The last meeting with the seal-people makes the man believe that they have more individualistic characteristics. They don’t have the bad odor anymore, just a pleasant scent. They use distinct syllabism, and, finally, living with them and swimming in the river seems more appealing to him than going back to the Soscites II. These seal-people have the same symbiote, which has altered their appearance and mind. At the end, Kaiser practically becomes one of them. ",
"The seal-people are the only other signs of life that Kaiser interacts with in the story. Although they are not very intelligent, they are friendly and somewhat harmless. Since Kaiser is trapped anyways, he usually finds time to go visit the seal-people and see any developments in the village. The seal-people are also important because they are infected with the symbiote that Kaiser becomes affected by, changing their appearances to better suit the climate changes that happen on the Big Muddy. As Kaiser spends more time with them, he realizes that they are not as bad as he thinks they are because they can change themselves. As Kaiser eventually chooses to abandon communication with the mother ship and join the seal-people, they have almost become his new family in a sense. ",
"The native seal-creatures in the story are important because their very existence unlocks a lot of answers that both Kaiser and those aboard the SS II seek. For one, Big Muddy is said to undergo extreme weather cycle changes between the spring and fall seasons, for which the natives are only able to survive through because of their adaptability. This adaptability is only possible due to the symbiotes that have invaded Kaiser, allowing them such physical change. \n\nThis alludes to what is happening to Kaiser. On his second and third explorations, he supposedly finds seal-people that have become more human-like and intelligence. As we now know by learning about the seal-people, it was less so about the seals being more intelligence but Kaiser becoming more seal-like through this symbiote enacting the physical change. \n",
"The seal-people are the native settlers of the planet in which Kaiser crashes. They are described to be half-seal and half-human. They have short hands with 3 fingers, and fin-like feet that allow them to walk on land. They are also very furry, with their color varying. At the beginning of the story, they are described as being unintelligent but friendly. After Kaiser visits a new village, they begin to be more intelligent and Kaiser can communicate with them better. At the end, Kaiser enjoys spending time with them and is showing signs of becoming one of them. \n"
] |
51398
|
Well, naturally Kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! He was—
GROWING UP ON BIG MUDDY
By CHARLES V. DE VET
Illustrated by TURPIN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. How long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? And why hadn't he noticed it before? Why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it?
He went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
Kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. Overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground.
"Damn this climate!" Kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "Doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?"
His attention returned to the matter at hand. Why the baby talk? And why was his memory so hazy? How long had he been here? What had he been doing during that time?
Listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. The air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. He'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. He remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone—or without better equipment, at least. Yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here.
Calmly, deliberately, Kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them:
The mother ship, Soscites II , had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. It had dropped Kaiser in the one remaining scout ship—the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds—and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that Kaiser had named Big Muddy.
The Soscites II had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. Its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, Earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. And now its fuel was low.
Kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever.
That was all he could remember. Nothing of what he had been doing recently.
A small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. Baby talk....
One thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. He turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. It held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages—both those sent and those received. He pulled it out impatiently and began reading.
The first was from himself:
YOUR SUGGESTIONS NO HELP. HOW AM I GOING TO REPAIR DAMAGE TO SCOUT WITHOUT PROPER EQUIPMENT? AND WHERE DO I GET IT? DO YOU THINK I FOUND A TOOL SHOP DOWN HERE? FOR GOD'S SAKE, COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER.
VISITED SEAL-PEOPLE AGAIN TODAY. STILL HAVE THEIR STINK IN MY NOSE. FOUND HUTS ALONG RIVER BANK, SO I GUESS THEY DON'T LIVE IN WATER. BUT THEY DO SPEND MOST OF THEIR TIME THERE. NO, I HAVE NO WAY OF ESTIMATING THEIR INTELLIGENCE. I WOULD JUDGE IT AVERAGES NO HIGHER THAN SEVEN-YEAR-OLD HUMAN. THEY DEFINITELY DO TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. WILL TRY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM, BUT YOU GET TO WORK FAST ON HOW I REPAIR SCOUT.
SWELLING IN ARM WORSE AND AM DEVELOPING A FEVER. TEMPERATURE 102.7 AN HOUR AGO.
SMOKY
The ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange.
DOING OUR BEST, SMOKY. YOUR IMMEDIATE PROBLEM, AS WE SEE IT, IS TO KEEP WELL. WE FED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU GAVE US INTO SAM, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE MUCH EXCEPT THE STING IN YOUR ARM. AS EXPECTED, ALL THAT CAME OUT WAS "DATA INSUFFICIENT." TRY TO GIVE US MORE. ALSO DETAIL ALL SYMPTOMS SINCE YOUR LAST REPORT. IN THE MEANTIME, WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN AT THIS END. GOOD LUCK.
SS II
Sam, Kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. His report followed:
ARM SWOLLEN. UNABLE TO KEEP DOWN FOOD LAST TWELVE HOURS. ABOUT TWO HOURS AGO, ENTIRE BODY TURNED LIVID RED. BRIEF PERIODS OF BLANKNESS. THINGS KEEP COMING AND GOING. SICK AS HELL. HURRY.
SMOKY
The ship's next message read:
INFECTION QUITE DEFINITE. BUT SOMETHING STRANGE THERE. GIVE US ANYTHING MORE YOU HAVE.
SS II
His own reply perplexed Kaiser:
LAST LETTER FUNNY. I NOT UNDERSTAND. WHY IS OO SENDING GARBLE TALK? DID USNS MAKE UP SECRET MESSAGES?
SMOKY
The expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he:
WHAT'S THE MATTER, SMOKY? THAT LAST MESSAGE WAS IN PLAIN TERRAN. NO REASON WHY YOU COULDN'T READ IT. AND WHY THE BABY TALK? IF YOU'RE SPOOFING, STOP. GIVE US MORE SYMPTOMS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING NOW?
SS II
The baby talk was worse on Kaiser's next:
TWAZY. WHAT FOR OO TENDING TWAZY LETTERS? FINK UM CAN WEAD TWAZY LETTERS? SKIN ALL YELLOW NOW. COLD. COLD. CO
The ship's following communication was three hours late. It was the last on the tape—the one Kaiser had read earlier. Apparently they decided to humor him.
OO IS SICK, SMOKY. DO TO BEDDY-BY. KEEP UM WARM. WHEN UM FEELS BETTER, LET USNS KNOW.
SS II
That was not much help. All it told him was that he had been sick.
He felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Cool. No fever anyway.
He glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. Twenty hours. He hadn't been out of his head too long. He began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit.
SEEM TO BE FULLY RECOVERED. FEELING FINE. ANYTHING NEW FROM SAM? AND HOW ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO SCOUT? GIVE ME ANYTHING YOU HAVE ON EITHER OR BOTH.
SMOKY
Kaiser felt suddenly weary. He lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. Soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness—he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream.
It was the same dream he had had many times before. In it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. He had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, Helene, did not love him. She had married him for the security his pay check provided. And though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. Instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way.
Her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. His mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment Kaiser.
Kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. The clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. Still five more long hours to wait. He rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout.
After a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of Big Muddy. The rain seemed to have eased off some. Not much more than a heavy drizzle now.
Kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. He opened the door. The scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and Kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground.
The weather outside was normal for Big Muddy: wet, humid, and warm.
Kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. He half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. Beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. Tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. The octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study.
Kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. Once there, he headed upstream. He could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. As usual, most were swimming in the river.
One old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. Perhaps a lookout. He pulled himself to his feet as he spied Kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting—or a warning to the others that a stranger approached.
The native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. Membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. The arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. His legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. They gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. About him hung a rank-fish smell that made Kaiser's stomach squirm.
The old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as Kaiser came near. Feeling slightly ineffectual, Kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. The other chirped again and Kaiser went on toward the main group.
They had stopped their play and eating as Kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. They varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. Some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths.
They had mammalian characteristics, Kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. The proportion was roughly fifty-fifty.
Several of the bolder males climbed up beside Kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. Kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. One native smeared Kaiser's face with an exploring paw and Kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. He was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this.
A young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. The entire group seemed to lose interest in Kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. Kaiser's inspectors followed.
They were a mindless lot, Kaiser observed. The river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies.
Kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. He took time to study their construction more closely this time.
They were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. How they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, Kaiser did not know. He had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. They then had to have sunlight. Maybe it rained less during certain seasons.
The domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. When the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. Each tier thus furnished support for the next above. No other framework was needed. The final tier formed the roof. They made sound shelters, but Kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank—and as smelly as the natives themselves.
The few loungers in the village paid little attention to Kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout.
The Soscites II sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and Kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout.
The job appeared maddeningly simply. As the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. The bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing.
Opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. Kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar—the best leverage he had on hand—but it resisted his best efforts. He still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day.
That evening, Kaiser received information from the Soscites II that was at least definite:
SET YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK, SMOKY. SAM FINALLY CAME THROUGH. YOU WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. AT LEAST NOT AT FIRST. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE. YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED BY A SYMBIOTE—SIMILAR TO THE TYPE FOUND ON THE SAND WORLD, BARTEL-BLEETHERS. GIVE US A FEW MORE HOURS TO WORK WITH SAM AND WE'LL GET YOU ALL THE PARTICULARS HE CAN GIVE US. HANG ON NOW!
SOSCITES II
Kaiser's reply was short and succinct:
WHAT THE HELL?
SMOKY
Soscites II's next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor:
JUST A FEW WORDS, SMOKY, IN CASE YOU'RE WORRIED. I THOUGHT I'D GET THIS OFF WHILE WE'RE WAITING FOR MORE INFORMATION FROM SAM. REMEMBER THAT A SYMBIOTE IS NOT A PARASITE. IT WILL NOT HARM YOU, EXCEPT INADVERTENTLY. YOUR WELFARE IS AS ESSENTIAL TO IT AS TO YOU. ALMOST CERTAINLY, IF YOU DIE, IT WILL DIE WITH YOU. ANY TROUBLE YOU'VE HAD SO FAR WAS PROBABLY CAUSED BY THE SYMBIOTE'S DIFFICULTY IN ADJUSTING ITSELF TO ITS NEW ENVIRONMENT. IN A WAY, I ENVY YOU. MORE LATER, WHEN WE FINISH WITH SAM.
J. G. ZARWELL
Kaiser did not answer. The news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. He lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours—until the next communication came in:
WELL, THIS IS WHAT SAM HAS TO SAY, SMOKY. SYMBIOTE AMICABLE AND APPARENTLY SWIFTLY ADAPTABLE. YOUR CHANGING COLOR, DIFFICULTY IN EATING AND EVEN BABY TALK WERE THE RESULT OF ITS EFFORTS TO GIVE YOU WHAT IT BELIEVED YOU NEEDED OR WANTED.
CHANGING COLOR: PROTECTIVE CAMOUFLAGE. TROUBLE KEEPING FOOD DOWN: IT KEPT YOUR STOMACH EMPTY BECAUSE IT SENSED YOU WERE IN TROUBLE AND MIGHT HAVE NEED FOR SHARP REFLEXES, WITH NO EXCESS WEIGHT TO CARRY. THE BABY TALK WE AREN'T TOO CERTAIN ABOUT, BUT OUR BEST CONCLUSION IS THAT WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, YOU WERE MOST HAPPY. IT WAS TRYING TO GIVE YOU BACK THAT HAPPY STATE OF MIND. OBVIOUSLY IT QUICKLY RECOGNIZED THE MISTAKES IT MADE AND CORRECTED THEM.
SAM CAME UP WITH A FEW MORE IDEAS, BUT WE WANT TO WORK ON THEM A BIT BEFORE WE SEND THEM THROUGH. SLEEP ON THIS.
SS II
Kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. He was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. He had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. True, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city.
His naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. He did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. They would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. He was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. And he returned the dislike.
The suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. He hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, Kaiser realized—and fell instantly asleep.
The communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke:
SAM COULDN'T HELP US MUCH ON THIS PART, BUT AFTER RESEARCH AND MUCH DISCUSSION, WE ARRIVED AT THE FOLLOWING TWO CONCLUSIONS.
FIRST, PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF SYMBIOTE IS EITHER THAT OF A VERY THIN LIQUID OR, MORE PROBABLY, A VIRUS FORM WITH SWIFT PROPAGATION CHARACTERISTIC. IT UNDOUBTEDLY LIVES IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM AND PERMEATES YOUR SYSTEM.
SECOND, IT SEEMED TO US, AS IT MUST HAVE TO YOU, THAT THE SYMBIOTE COULD ONLY KNOW WHAT YOU WANTED BY READING YOUR MIND. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY NOW. WE THINK THAT IT HAS SUCH CLOSE CONTACT WITH YOUR GLANDS AND THEIR SECRETIONS, WHICH STIMULATE EMOTION, THAT IT CAN GAUGE YOUR FEELINGS EVEN MORE ACCURATELY THAN YOU YOURSELF CAN. THUS IT CAN JUDGE YOUR LIKES AND DISLIKES QUITE ACCURATELY.
WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU TEST OUR THEORY. THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS. IF YOU ARE STUMPED AND NEED SUGGESTIONS, JUST LET US KNOW. WE AWAIT WORD FROM YOU WITH GREAT INTEREST.
SS II
By now, Kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. His distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. With eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. After a few minutes, an idea occurred to him.
Taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. He knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. The cut bled a few slow drops—and as Kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped.
That checked pretty well with the ship's theory.
Perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. He tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. It seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. Walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. Each letter stood out sharp and clear!
Kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. Concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. The result surprised and pleased him.
The temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here.
As a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. Temperature
102, humidity 113—just about the same as it had been on earlier readings.
During the next twenty-four hours, Kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. In between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. He had no more success than before.
He tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. Each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately—and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. At first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. His one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged.
At last Kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. He sent out a terse message to the Soscites II :
TAKING SHORT TRIP TO ANOTHER LOCATION ON RIVER. HOPE TO FIND MORE INTELLIGENT NATIVES. COULD BE THAT THE SETTLEMENT I FOUND HERE IS ANALOGOUS TO TRIBE OF MONKEYS ON EARTH. I KNOW THE CHANCE IS SMALL, BUT WHAT HAVE I TO LOSE? I CAN'T FIX SCOUT WITHOUT BETTER TOOLS, AND IF MY GUESS IS RIGHT, I MAY BE ABLE TO GET EQUIPMENT. EXPECT TO RETURN IN TEN OR TWELVE HOURS. PLEASE KEEP CONTACT WITH SCOUT.
SMOKY
Kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. He had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. He intended to find out.
Wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, Kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. He hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey—in the opposite direction from the first native settlement.
He walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. And a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. He received a further pleasant surprise. This group was decidedly more advanced than the first!
They were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. And their odor was more subdued, less repugnant.
By signs, Kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. A thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. The first male took the weed and brought it to Kaiser. This was obviously a gesture of friendship.
The weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. Kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it.
The weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. He swallowed the mouthful and tried another. He ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction.
As dusk fell, Kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. All apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. Apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. Lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world.
Once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. However, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and Kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went.
The next morning, Kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. The seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly.
That friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. The natives crowded around as he swam—they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency—and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. He had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. As he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under.
Kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. They sank deeper.
When his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, Kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. He reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom.
As he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. He stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. He shrugged helplessly.
There was no longer anything to be gained by staying here—if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them—and he packed and started back to the scout.
Kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. He had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. Above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel.
When he reached the scout, Kaiser began to unload the sled. The tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. To his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground.
Perplexed, Kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. They felt exceptionally light. He paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened.
Moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. He did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there.
Inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. Nothing happened. He rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. The metal beneath yielded slightly—but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever.
Only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. His hands ached and tingled. His strength must have been increased tremendously. With his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. The metal of the scout bottom gave slowly—until the fuel pump hung free!
Kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. He let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act.
He transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him.
The first was quite routine:
REPORTS FROM THE OCTOPUS INDICATE THAT BIG MUDDY UNDERGOES RADICAL WEATHER-CYCLE CHANGES DURING SPRING AND FALL SEASONS, FROM EXTREME MOISTURE TO EXTREME ARIDITY. AT HEIGHT OF DRY SEASON, PLANET MUST BE COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SURFACE LIQUID.
TO SURVIVE THESE UNUSUAL EXTREMES, SEAL-PEOPLE WOULD NEED EXTREME ADAPTABILITY. THIS VERIFIES OUR EARLIER GUESS THAT NATIVES HAVE SYMBIOSIS WITH THE SAME VIRUS FORM THAT INVADED YOU. WITH SYMBIOTES' AID, SUCH RADICAL PHYSICAL CHANGE COULD BE POSSIBLE. WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED.
GIVE US ANY NEW INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE ON NATIVES.
SS II
The second report was not so routine. Kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it.
SUGGEST YOU DEVOTE ALL TIME AND EFFORT TO REPAIR OF SCOUT. INFORMATION ON SEAL-PEOPLE ADEQUATE FOR OUR PURPOSES.
SS II
Kaiser did not answer either communication. His earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. He lay on his cot and went to sleep.
In the morning, another message was waiting:
VERY PLEASED TO HEAR OF PROGRESS ON REPAIR OF SCOUT. COMPLETE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND RETURN HERE IMMEDIATELY.
SS II
Kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. Could the Soscites II be experiencing some difficulty? He shrugged the thought aside. If they were, they would have told him. The last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency—there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information.
Strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod Kaiser. He knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. And the Soscites II would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet.
Without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, Kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. When he became hungry, he went back inside.
Another message came in as he finished eating. This one was from the captain himself:
WHY HAVE WE RECEIVED NO VERIFICATION OF LAST INSTRUCTIONS? REPAIR SCOUT IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY. THIS IS AN ORDER!
H. A. HESSE, CAPT.
Kaiser pushed the last of his meal—which he had been eating with his fingers—into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor.
He pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. For some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. He placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. It was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip.
The tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when Kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. However, there were other seal-people here.
And they were almost human!
The resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup—that was little changed from the first he had found—as in their obviously greater intelligence.
This was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. Kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. Where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. Also, these had no odor—only a mild, rather pleasing scent. When they came to meet him, Kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings.
Most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as Kaiser set up his tent.
One was a female.
They made small noises while he went about his work. After a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. He tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. Kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. He was fairly successful. He was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation.
The male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until Kaiser finished. She motioned to him then to follow. When they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water.
Before he had time to decide, Kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. He stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape:
STILL ANXIOUSLY AWAITING WORD FROM YOU.
IN MEANTIME, GIVE VERY CLOSE ATTENTION TO FOLLOWING.
WE KNOW THAT THE SYMBIOTES MUST BE ABLE TO MAKE RADICAL CHANGES IN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEAL-PEOPLE. THERE IS EVERY PROBABILITY THAT YOURS WILL ATTEMPT TO DO THE SAME TO YOU—TO BETTER FIT YOUR BODY TO ITS PRESENT ENVIRONMENT.
THE DANGER, WHICH WE HESITATED TO MENTION UNTIL NOW—WHEN YOU HAVE FORCED US BY YOUR OBSTINATE SILENCE—IS THAT IT CAN ALTER YOUR MIND ALSO. YOUR REPORT ON SECOND TRIBE OF SEAL-PEOPLE STRONGLY INDICATES THAT THIS IS ALREADY HAPPENING. THEY WERE PROBABLY NOT MORE INTELLIGENT AND HUMANLIKE THAN THE OTHERS. ON THE CONTRARY, YOU ARE BECOMING MORE LIKE THEM.
DANGER ACUTE. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: IMMEDIATELY!
SS II
Kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts.
When he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. She pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. Kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. They ran, still laughing, into the water.
Already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots.
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How is the theme of global warming explored throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Expendables by Jim Harmon.
Relevant chunks:
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
Question:
How is the theme of global warming explored throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Throughout the story, a racketeer demands a professor create a machine to destroy the dead body he has without leaving any traces. The professor invented the device that can destroy mass into nothingness without knowing where the decomposed particles or mass go. However, later in the story, it reveals that the missing energy is turned into heat under the rule of energy conservation, resulting in a rising global temperature. The officials come to ban the usage and production of the machine, but the professor knows that people will still use it for its convenience, just like what people do concerning the wasteful use of water when it is in dire need. The professor ends up creating a machine whose side effect would cool down the temperature to fix the problem. The theme of global warming is explored through the conflicted balance between convenience and environmental damage. People tend to use what is convenient for them with the knowledge of its ecological harm until the consequence is no longer recoverable. The author tries to imply that if we keep wasting resources and damage the environment for our benefit, global warming will reach a point where the earth is no longer recoverable. It is also mentioned in the professor’s thought when he is thinking about selling the machine that tons of patented perpetual motion machines are created, used, and remain as trash without the means to get rid of them. People don’t care whether there is a solution to get rid of those trash completely or don’t know how, but they still produce and use them. This preference for convenience over the environment indicates that humans would not stop their pollution until they bear the consequence of their deeds, not to mention improve the situation of global warming.",
"Professor Venetti was struggling when creating the mechanism because the physical law of energy conservation didn’t allow him to destroy energy without its simultaneous recreation. Eventually, we learn that the Expandable was actually recreating the energy of the disintegrated matter in the form of heat. His invention led to global warming - the increase in the mean temperature on Earth. The professor realizes the danger of his invention but also admits that it’s unlikely people would quickly stop using such a convenient mechanism. They would ignore the consequences. ",
"Global warming is an important theme throughout the story. At first, Venetti wanted to create a machine that could reduce the environmental impact of radioactive and nuclear waste. This type of waste harmed the environment, as before the expendables the waste was put underground, where it would seep into the ocean and water supplies. After the use of expendables increased, it seemed like there was little environmental impact, but then it was revealed that the expendables actually increased global warming. This led to Veretti creating a new device that could reverse the effects, leading to all the dead bodies coming back and Veretti getting put on trial. ",
"One of the main themes explored in “The Expenables” is the concept of global warming. Even though published in 1962, the story gives a commentary on the roots of global warming and human responses to it. Initially, we are introduced to the issue of waste with the government and a scientist trying to figure out a way out of it. The ideal thought that we could create an invention that could simply “remove” trash reminds the readers of how we as humans take the consequences of our actions for granted and think that anything can be fixed, even global littering. This shows that we tend to tackle such global problems at the end of their timeline rather than try to genuinely prevent them from happening in the first place. By the end of the story, however, even when a machine has been successfully created to fix this issue, another one, an increase in Earth temperature still occurs. In other words, as the law of conversion of energy states in the story that an energy cannot be destroyed without producing another energy is similar to saying that every action has to have a consequence. The readers recognize that they cannot get the best of both worlds all the time. Venetti also mentions to the Atomic Energy Commission when they want to end the Expendables that the public would not agree to do so because of how convenient it is just like failure to stop them from watering lawns. This symbolizes how global warming or any global issue usually arises from humans’ carelessness and laziness, assuming that their actions are of little importance on this big Earth.\n"
] |
61171
|
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Expendables by Jim Harmon.
Relevant chunks:
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"A racketeer, Tony Carmen, comes to Professor Venetti, demanding him figure out how to get rid of the corpse in his house without leaving any traces by using the information Professor Venetti has in his job for the U.S. government that is related to the disposal problem of nuclear waste. Tony threatens Professor Venetti that if Professor Venetti does not abide by what he says, his connection with Mafia will cause Professor Venetti a lot of trouble. Afraid of what the Mafia may do, Professor Venetti finally accepts his request. However, professor Venetti does not abide by the safety and careful principles when he invents the machine, which is named Expendable late after by Tony. He does not know how the machine works either; he creates a device that can turn physical mass into nothingness without knowing where the disposed of mass or energy goes. When he gives the machine to Tony, Tony asks how the machine works, but Professor Venetti cannot explain. Later on, Tony sets up the device on the street, ordering Professor Venetti to turn on the machine, which is modified by a boy who used to be a mechanic, and Professor Venetti does. The machine destroys a warehouse, including the people inside. Professor Venetti condemns Tony for committing a crime, but Tony does not care as there is no corpse to prove the crime. \n\nTony persuades Professor Venetti to put the Expendables into business. He leaks the information about the machine through newspapers to attract big corporations to come for them. As they make more profits from the product and go through all the business matters, an agent from Atomic Energy Commission comes. The agent informs them about the ban of their products because there is a research finding that the side effect of their product is the heat transformed from the mass, which results in the rising temperature. Professor Venetti believes that people would not stop using the products even if they knew what environmental damage they would cause. He creates a reverse version of the machine, called Disexpendable, which would consume the excess energy produced by the Expendables. After he completes it, he turns it on. As the Disexpendable operates, the temperature gets colder, and the corpse, once decomposed, appears in the room in front of the agent. At the same time, Tony orders Professor Venetti to turn off the machine.\n",
"Tony Carmen, a criminal with connections in the Mafia, comes to professor Venetti with a request to create some method of getting rid of human corpses with no traces. He says that these are bodies of accident victims left by Harry Keno. Professor tries to come up with different conventional methods. Carmen mentions that he knows Venetti’s affiliation with the radioactive waste disposal program coordinated by the government and wants something more scientifically-based. Venetti thinks about all the attempts the government made to dispose of radioactive waste, but they were all futile since there was no way of creating an effective mechanism without breaking the law of energy conservation. He experiments and manages to create a machine that erases any physical object without any thermal or gravitational traces. When Tony Carmen asks where the matter goes, the professor honestly admits that he doesn’t know. Carmen is suspicious, but Venetti firmly states that even if the objects go to the future or the past, there is a small chance of them appearing again soon. Tony starts talking about the mass-production of these machines, but Venetti initially protests, scared of legal prosecution and reputational damage. But eventually, the professor gives up, realizing that this mechanism - Tony calls it an Expendable - won’t be useful to the government. Sometime later, Camren and Venetti decide to test the machine outside. After flipping the switch, Venetti sees that a distant warehouse building disappears. He is shocked and soon notices that the unit is halved. Tony says that his friend separated the mechanism to square the operational field, and it worked. He also says that his enemy Harry Keno just got wiped out together with his intimates and their confidential squat. The following morning, the Times mentions the vanishing of the building and that the government is developing a disintegrating process for waste. Tony comes to him and tells him that Arcivox - a company producing radios and TV sets - wants to buy the machine. Tony suggests selling the potent and keeping it in control through a separate corporation. Several months later, professor Venetti is in his office talking to his secretary, Miss Brown, about the future business communications. Suddenly Tony bangs open the door and says that G-men are on their way. Seconds later, an investigator from the Atomic Energy Commission comes in. He quickly states that the manufacturing of the Expendable will soon be banned. He explains that their scientists understood that the energy the machine seemingly destroyed actually turned into heat. This process increased the mean temperature. The professor agrees but adds that people are too stubborn to stop using the machine. He suggests creating an engine that would use up this extra energy. When they switch the disexpendable on, slowly the body of Harry Keno appears on the revolving disc. At the end, Venetti claims that his inventions are useless now and that this story is true, and he encourages the readers to write letters towards his upcoming defense.",
"The story follows a scientist who works for the U.S. Government. He is trying to find ways that the Government can get rid of radioactive and nuclear waste cleanly and safely. He is approached by a member of the Italian Mob. He asks Venetti to continue making this instrument, and to give him a copy when he makes it, because he needs to find a way to get rid of human bodies. At the beginning Venetti doubts doing this, but he believes it is a good way to make money. Venetti finally makes it and it, and gives Venetti one of the machines. The machine seems to get rid of anything that is put in it, without leaving behind any trace. Together, they start a company and commercially sell the boxes as expendables. They start to gain a lot of money, because it makes life easier for a lot of people. Their company grows a lot, and they start to get a lot of. Finally, it is revealed that the expendables have been contributing to global warming, as it excretes the energy into the environment. Venetti develops another machine in order to counteract the effects of the original expendable, which leads to regenerating everything that was put in the machine, including the dead bodies. This leads to Venetti being sued for the expendables, as people believe that he approached the member of the mob first. ",
"The Expendables is written in the form of a personal account by scientist Professor Venetti. He is approached by a stranger claiming to know the Mafia, Tony Carmen, who asks him for a favor to which Venetti initially refuses. Carmen is trying to use the professor’s potential invention to get rid of dead bodies Carmen has. After Carmen makes Venetti aware that he knows about his secret project with the government to develop an innovation that would get rid of radioactive wastes, Carmen manages to make Venetti agree to help him. Prof. Venetti makes him promise that he did not kill the bodies. Venetti has yet to succeed in finding such an invention because this requires a neutralization of the radioactive emanations while he has only been able to reduce the radioactive mass. With less responsibility and credibility associated with Tony’s request compared to the government’s, he decides to perform more risky experimentations. He finds a way to make trash disappear but by completely destroying its mass. Venetti thinks that contrary to the government, Carmen would not be curious enough to ask where the mass actually goes. Carmen does in fact ask this when Venetti shows him the machine as he is concerned that he will get caught. Venetti genuinely does not know the answer and Carmen proposes that they launch the machine as the “Expendable”. With his business expertise, Carmen promises to help with the launch while Venetti is still concerned with the ethical implications such as a possible rise in murder rate. Together, they go test the machine on an empty, wide land with bodyguards around in case any policemen show up. When they use it, a square shape of the horizon disappears and Tony uses the machine for corpses which Venetti ultimately understands were results of Carmen’s own crime. The next morning, the innovation is featured in the newspaper as a rumor. Arcivox, a radio and TV company, expresses interest. Tony convinces Venetti to accept the offer when they come forward, saying that he will give him a large portion of the stocks.\n\nFlash forward into time, after taking the offer, Venetti is now a business man but he is not enjoying it. One day, the Atomic Energy Commission approaches his team, telling him they need to end the Expendables. They explain that their scientists used to think that the increasing hot weather was due to nuclear testing but they found that it was in fact due to the Expendables. The machines merely destroy matter but do not create any, violating the law of conversion of energy which could raise the Earth temperature to worrying extremities. Venetti argues that the public would not be willing to stop its use because of how convenient it is and instead agrees to create “Disexpendibles” which would create the opposite effect. When put to use, the temperature readjusts but trash reappears and so do the bodies that Tony wanted gone. At the very least, this held Tony accountable for his actions.\n"
] |
61171
|
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
|
What are Professor Venetti’s inventions and what do they do?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Expendables by Jim Harmon.
Relevant chunks:
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
Question:
What are Professor Venetti’s inventions and what do they do?
Answer:
|
[
"Professor Venetti’s inventions are the Expendables which can decompose anything into nothingness without apparent side effects. It is first shown to violate the energy conservation rule when Professor Venetti finds it produces nothing after the decomposition, and he does not know where the decomposed particles go. However, later in the story, it is revealed by an investigator of the Atomic Energy Commission that the energy transformed from mass through the machine turns into heat, resulting in the rising global temperature. The other device he creates is Disexpendable, the reverse version of the Expendable. It is a medium-sized drum in a frame with an unturned coolie’s hat at the bottom. Disexpendable has a low-efficiency engine, and it can consume excess energy produced by the Expendable and lower the temperature. Consuming the excess energy also makes the once-decomposed mass back together again, such as the corpse.",
"Professor Venetti’s first invention is called an Expandable. Initially, it’s believed to be able to destroy any physical object without any energy traces. But later the characters learn that the energy of all the waste has been turning into heat, increasing the mean temperature on Earth. This invention almost could lead to climate catastrophe. The second invention is called the Disexpendable - it is an engine that uses excess heat energy. It can be created by reversing the field of the first mechanism. It can draw back the processed material or people, as we see when the body of Harry Keno, who vanished months ago, together with his warehouse, appears on the revolving disk of the engine. ",
"Professor Venetti worked for the U.S. government in order to make a device that could get rid of radioactive waste. The device that he created is called an expendable, and it is a box that gets rid of anything that is put in it without any trace. The inventions allow for an increased convenience for consumers who need to get rid of things. At first, the inventions were thought to have no environmental impact, but it is revealed that they had a lot of impact on global warming, as it released energy as heat energy. ",
"Professor Venetti is working on a secret project with the government to create an innovation that would potentially be able to get rid of radioactive wastes. The problem that Venetti is faced with is that getting an energy to destroy another energy without creating new energy actually violates the law of conservation of energy. Nevertheless, Venetti tries to challenge this law. Venetti has yet to succeed in finding such an invention because this requires a neutralization of the radioactive emanations while he has only been able to reduce the radioactive mass. Ultimately, motivated by Venetti’s agreement, he finds a way to make trash disappear but by completely destroying its mass. Together with Carmen, they call this machine the “Expendable.” The only issue is that Venetti does not actually know where the disappeared mass goes. Later, this invention causes issues as by violating the law of conservation of energy, it raises the Earth’s temperature. To fix this, Venetti comes up with another invention, the “Disexpendable,” which would do the opposite effect, consuming the excess energy. He is able to restore the cool temperature back but as a result, this unfortunately brings back all radioactive wastes that were removed by the “Expendables” too.\n"
] |
61171
|
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
|
How is the theme of capitalism explored throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Expendables by Jim Harmon.
Relevant chunks:
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
Question:
How is the theme of capitalism explored throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The theme of capitalism is explored throughout the story by the greed of the racketeer, Tony Carmen, and how he prefers profits over the environment. In the story, Professor Venetti creates a machine that can easily decompose anything without knowing how it works and where the decomposed particles go. His process of creating the device is also not carefully examined under the safety rules. Despite knowing these manufacturing facts and the uncertainty of its consequences, Tony Carmen makes this machine into a business and sells it for a considerable profit, with the collaboration of Professor Venetti. The theme of capitalism is shown through the preference for profits over safety when seeking profits from a product. It is also explored through Tony’s dealings with business corporates and how he attracts business corporations’ attention to sell their products. Revealed by Tony’s testimony, big business corporations would have detectives and their sources of information to buy the inventions and sell them. Finally, the mechanism of the business world and the dark side of capitalism are shown through Tony’s plan to sell the products and all the dirty work behind it when Professor Venetti’s secretary is reading the letters regarding their business matter from several organizations.",
"The story shows how commercial benefits may outweigh all the negative consequences of inventions and products. Tony Carmen says that the government would allow a private company like Arcivox to sell anything - they just have to find a commercial use for a potential product. Tony Carmen’s and Venetti’s desire to profit off of the professor’s mechanism leads to global warming and makes the threat of climate doomsday more than realistic. The story also shows that people disregard environmental repercussions when the commodity they’re using is convenient.\n\n\n",
"Capitalism is one of the most important themes in the story. Veretti’s and Tony’s hunger for money is what led them to selling these very controversial boxes, and Veretti deciding to look away when the boxes were used for murder. When convincing Veretti to work with him, Tony even compares him to Henry Ford and Sam Colt, two famous capitalists that also decided to look away when their inventions lead to death. Capitalism also was the reason that led to an absurd number of sales of the expendables, as consumers are always looking for their lives to be easier. The expendables provided this exact same service, as it was a very easy and simple way that people could get rid of trash.",
"One of the main themes explored in “The Expenables” is also the concept of capitalism. We are first introduced to a scientist working for the government with the best intentions to find a fix to a global issue through innovation. As the story goes on, however, he is lured by a stranger belonging to the mafia to take the easy and riskier path to speed up the process of creating a successful innovation. Additionally, when this machine works, we see the professor ditch his ethical concerns around it and rather starts getting attracted by the financial benefits he is told he could get by the stranger if he were to launch his product on the market. Instead of sticking with his initial intentions of helping the government, he chooses to partner with a large corporation who takes on his machines worldwide as he is promised a big sum of the stocks. This showcases human greed that arises from capitalism and how it can consume an individual to the point that they disregard all ethical thoughts, even when on a global level. Moreover, we are introduced to the idea of convenience the public is used to. Instead of ending his machines, the scientist creates another machine to counter the effect of his first one as he believes the public will not be able to part its convenience. This showcases the speed as to which capitalism has led our lives to adapt to and how because of that, people would choose convenience over the greater good at any time.\n"
] |
61171
|
THE EXPENDABLES
BY JIM HARMON
It was just a little black box, useful for getting rid of things. Trouble was, it worked too well!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"You see my problem, Professor?" Tony Carmen held his pinkly manicured, flashily ringed hands wide.
I saw his problem and it was warmly embarrassing.
"Really, Mr. Carmen," I said, "this isn't the sort of thing you discuss with a total stranger. I'm not a doctor—not of medicine, anyway—or a lawyer."
"They can't help me. I need an operator in your line."
"I work for the United States government. I can't become involved in anything illegal."
Carmen smoothed down the front of his too-tight midnight blue suit and touched the diamond sticking in his silver tie. "You can't, Professor Venetti? Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"I've heard of it," I said uneasily. "An old fraternal organization something like the Moose or Rosicrucians, founded in Sicily. It allegedly controls organized crime in the U.S. But that is a responsibility-eluding myth that honest Italian-Americans are stamping out. We don't even like to see the word in print."
"I can understand honest Italian-Americans feeling that way. But guys like me know the Mafia is still with it. We can put the squeeze on marks like you pretty easy."
You don't have to tell even a third generation American about the Mafia. Maybe that was the trouble. I had heard too much and for too long. All the stories I had ever heard about the Mafia, true or false, built up an unendurable threat.
"All right, I'll try to help you, Carmen. But ... that is, you didn't kill any of these people?"
He snorted. "I haven't killed anybody since early 1943."
"Please," I said weakly. "You needn't incriminate yourself with me."
"I was in the Marines," Carmen said hotly. "Listen, Professor, these aren't no Prohibition times. Not many people get made for a hit these days. Mother, most of these bodies they keep ditching at my club haven't been murdered by anybody. They're accident victims. Rumbums with too much anti-freeze for a summer's day, Spanish-American War vets going to visit Teddy in the natural course of events. Harry Keno just stows them at my place to embarrass me. Figures to make me lose my liquor license or take a contempt before the Grand Jury."
"I don't suppose you could just go to the police—" I saw the answer in his eyes. "No. I don't suppose you could."
"I told you once, Professor, but I'll tell you again. I have to get rid of these bodies they keep leaving in my kitchen. I can take 'em and throw them in the river, sure. But what if me or my boys are stopped en route by some tipped badge?"
"Quicklime?" I suggested automatically.
"What are you talking about? Are you sure you're some kind of scientist? Lime doesn't do much to a stiff at all. Kind of putrifies them like...."
"I forgot," I admitted. "I'd read it in so many stories I'd forgotten it wouldn't work. And I suppose the furnace leaves ashes and there's always traces of hair and teeth in the garbage disposal... An interesting problem, at that."
"I figured you could handle it," Carmen said, leaning back comfortably in the favorite chair of my bachelor apartment. "I heard you were working on something to get rid of trash for the government."
"That," I told him, "is restricted information. I subcontracted that work from the big telephone laboratories. How did you find it out?"
"Ways, Professor, ways."
The government did want me to find a way to dispose of wastes—radioactive wastes. It was the most important problem any country could have in this time of growing atomic industry. Now a small-time gangster was asking me to use this research to help him dispose of hot corpses. It made my scientific blood seethe. But the shadow of the Black Hand cooled it off.
"Maybe I can find something in that area of research to help you," I said. "I'll call you."
"Don't take too long, Professor," Carmen said cordially.
The big drum topped with a metallic coolie's hat had started out as a neutralizer for radioactivity. Now I didn't know what to call it.
The AEC had found burying canisters of hot rubbish in the desert or in the Gulf had eventually proved unsatisfactory. Earth tremors or changes of temperature split the tanks in the ground, causing leaks. The undersea containers rusted and corroded through the time, poisoning fish and fishermen.
Through the SBA I had been awarded a subcontract to work on the problem. The ideal solution would be to find a way to neutralize radioactive emanations, alpha, beta, X et cetera. (No, my dear, et cetera rays aren't any more dangerous than the rest.) But this is easier written than done.
Of course, getting energy to destroy energy without producing energy or matter is a violation of the maxim of the conservation of energy. But I didn't let that stop me—any more than I would have let the velocity of light put any limitations on a spacecraft engine had I been engaged to work on one. You can't allow other people's ideas to tie you hand and foot. There are some who tell me, however, that my refusal to honor such time-tested cliches is why I only have a small private laboratory owned by myself, my late wife's father and the bank, instead of working in the vast facilities of Bell, Du Pont, or General Motors. To this, I can only smile and nod.
But even refusing to be balked by conservative ideas, I failed.
I could not neutralize radioactivity. All I had been able to do (by a basic disturbance in the electromagnetogravitational co-ordinant system for Earth-Sun) was to reduce the mass of the radioactive matter.
This only concentrated the radiations, as in boiling contaminated water. It did make the hot stuff vaguely easier to handle, but it was no breakthrough on the central problem.
Now, in the middle of this, I was supposed to find a way to get rid of some damned bodies for Carmen.
Pressed for time and knowing the results wouldn't have to be so precise or carefully defined for a racketeer as for the United States government, I began experimenting.
I cut corners.
I bypassed complete safety circuits.
I put dangerous overloads on some transformers and doodled with the wiring diagrams. If I got some kind of passable incinerator I would be happy.
I turned the machine on.
The lights popped out.
There were changes that should be made before I tried that again, but instead I only found a larger fuse for a heavier load and jammed that in the switchbox.
I flipped my machine into service once again. The lights flickered and held.
The dials on my control board told me the story. It was hard to take.
But there it was.
The internal Scale showed zero.
I had had a slightly hot bar of silver alloy inside. It was completely gone. Mass zero. The temperature gauge showed that there had been no change in centigrade reading that couldn't be explained by the mechanical operation of the machine itself. There had been no sudden discharge of electricity or radioactivity. I checked for a standard anti-gravity effect but there was none. Gravity inside the cylinder had gone to zero but never to minus.
I was at last violating conservation of energy—not by successfully inverting the cube of the ionization factor, but by destroying mass ... by simply making it cease to exist with no cause-and-effect side effects.
I knew the government wouldn't be interested, since I couldn't explain how my device worked. No amount of successful demonstration could ever convince anybody with any scientific training that it actually did work.
But I shrewdly judged that Tony Carmen wouldn't ask an embarrassing
"how" when he was incapable of understanding the explanation.
"Yeah, but how does it work?" Tony Carmen demanded of me, sleeking his mirror-black hair and staring up at the disk-topped drum.
"Why do you care?" I asked irritably. "It will dispose of your bodies for you."
"I got a reason that goes beyond the stiff, but let's stick to that just for now. Where are these bodies going? I don't want them winding up in the D.A.'s bathtub."
"Why not? How could they trace them back to you?"
"You're the scientist," Tony said hotly. "I got great respect for those crime lab boys. Maybe the stiff got some of my exclusive brand of talc on it, I don't know."
"Listen here, Carmen," I said, "what makes you think these bodies are going somewhere? Think of it only as a kind of—incinerator."
"Not on your life, Professor. The gadget don't get hot so how can it burn? It don't use enough electricity to fry. It don't cut 'em up or crush 'em down, or dissolve them in acid. I've seen disappearing cabinets before."
Mafia or not, I saw red. "Are you daring to suggest that I am working some trick with trap doors or sliding panels?"
"Easy, Professor," Carmen said, effortlessly shoving me back with one palm. "I'm not saying you have the machine rigged. It's just that you have to be dropping the stuff through a sliding panel in—well, everything around us. You're sliding all that aside and dropping things through. But I want to know where they wind up. Reasonable?"
Carmen was an uneducated lout and a criminal but he had an instinctive feel for the mechanics of physics.
"I don't know where the stuff goes, Carmen," I finally admitted. "It might go into another plane of existence. 'Another dimension' the writers for the American Weekly would describe it. Or into our past, or our future."
The swarthy racketeer pursed his lips and apparently did some rapid calculation.
"I don't mind the first two, but I don't like them going into the future. If they do that, they may show up again in six months."
"Or six million years."
"You'll have to cut that future part out, Professor."
I was beginning to get a trifle impatient. All those folk tales I had heard about the Mafia were getting more distant. "See here, Carmen, I could lie to you and say they went into the prehistoric past and you would never know the difference. But the truth is, I just don't know where the processed material goes. There's a chance it may go into the future, yes. But unless it goes exactly one year or exactly so many years it would appear in empty space ... because the earth will have moved from the spot it was transmitted. I don't know for sure. Perhaps the slight Deneb-ward movement of the Solar System would wreck a perfect three-point landing even then and cause the dispatched materials to burn up from atmospheric friction, like meteors. You will just have to take a chance on the future. That's the best I can do."
Carmen inhaled deeply. "Okay. I'll risk it. Pretty long odds against any squeal on the play. How many of these things can you turn out, Professor?"
"I can construct a duplicate of this device so that you may destroy the unwanted corpses that you would have me believe are delivered to you with the regularity of the morning milk run."
The racketeer waved that suggestion aside. "I'm talking about a big operation, Venetti. These things can take the place of incinerators, garbage disposals, waste baskets...."
"Impractical," I snorted. "You don't realize the tremendous amount of electrical power these devices require...."
"Nuts! From what you said, the machine is like a TV set; it takes a lot of power to get it started, but then on it coasts on its own generators."
"There's something to what you say," I admitted in the face of his unexpected information. "But I can hardly turn my invention over to your entirely persuasive salesmen, I'm sure. This is part of the results of an investigation for the government. Washington will have to decide what to do with the machine."
"Listen, Professor," Carmen began, "the Mafia—"
"What makes you think I'm any more afraid of the Mafia than I am of the F.B.I.? I may have already sealed my fate by letting you in on this much. Machinegunning is hardly a less attractive fate to me than a poor security rating. To me, being dead professionally would be as bad as being dead biologically."
Tony Carmen laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. I finally deduced he intended to be cordial.
"Of course," he said smoothly "you have to give this to Washington but there are ways , Professor. I know. I'm a business man—"
"You are ?" I said.
He named some of the businesses in which he held large shares of stock.
"You are ."
"I've had experience in this sort of thing. We simply leak the information to a few hundred well selected persons about all that your machine can do. We'll call 'em Expendables, because they can expend anything."
"I," I interjected, "planned to call it the Venetti Machine."
"Professor, who calls the radio the Marconi these days?"
"There are Geiger-Muller Counters, though," I said.
"You don't have to give a Geiger counter the sex appeal of a TV set or a hardtop convertible. We'll call them Expendables. No home will be complete without one."
"Perfect for disposing of unwanted bodies," I mused. "The murder rate will go alarmingly with those devices within easy reach."
"Did that stop Sam Colt or Henry Ford?" Tony Carmen asked reasonably....
Naturally, I was aware that the government would not be interested in my machine. I am not a Fortean, a psychic, a psionicist or a screwball. But the government frequently gets things it doesn't know what to do with—like airplanes in the 'twenties. When it doesn't know what to do, it doesn't do it.
There have been hundreds of workable perpetual motion machines patented, for example. Of course, they weren't vices in the strictest sense of the word. Many of them used the external power of gravity, they would wear out or slow down in time from friction, but for the meanwhile, for some ten to two hundred years they would just sit there, moving. No one had ever been able to figure out what to do with them.
I knew the AEC wasn't going to dump tons of radioactive waste (with some possible future reclaimation value) into a machine which they didn't believe actually could work.
Tony Carmen knew exactly what to do with an Expendable once he got his hands on it.
Naturally, that was what I had been afraid of.
The closed sedan was warm, even in early December.
Outside, the street was a progression of shadowed block forms. I was shivering slightly, my teeth rattling like the porcelain they were. Was this the storied "ride," I wondered?
Carmen finally returned to the car, unlatched the door and slid in. He did not reinsert the ignition key. I did not feel like sprinting down the deserted street.
"The boys will have it set up in a minute," Tony the racketeer informed me.
"What?" The firing squad?
"The Expendable, of course."
"Here? You dragged me out here to see how you have prostituted my invention? I presume you've set it up with a 'Keep Our City Clean' sign pasted on it."
He chuckled. It was a somewhat nasty sound, or so I imagined.
A flashlight winked in the sooty twilight.
"Okay. Let's go," Tony said, slapping my shoulder.
I got out of the car, rubbing my flabby bicep. Whenever I took my teen-age daughter to the beach from my late wife's parents' home, I frequently found 230 pound bullies did kick sand in my ears.
The machine was installed on the corner, half covered with a gloomy white shroud, and fearlessly plugged into the city lighting system via a blanketed streetlamp. Two hoods hovered in a doorway ready to take care of the first cop with a couple of fifties or a single .38, as necessity dictated.
Tony guided my elbow. "Okay, Professor, I think I understand the bit now, but I'll let you run it up with the flagpole for me, to see how it waves to the national anthem."
"Here?" I spluttered once more. "I told you, Carmen, I wanted nothing more to do with you. Your check is still on deposit...."
"You didn't want anything to do with me in the first place." The thug's teeth flashed in the night. "Throw your contraption into gear, buddy."
That was the first time the tone of respect, even if faked, had gone out of his voice. I moved to the switchboard of my invention. What remained was as simple as adjusting a modern floor lamp to a medium light position. I flipped.
Restraining any impulse toward colloqualism, I was also deeply disturbed by what next occurred.
One of the massive square shapes on the horizon vanished.
"What have you done?" I yelped, ripping the cover off the machine.
Even under the uncertain illumination of the smogged stars I could see that the unit was half gone—in fact, exactly halved.
"Squint the Seal is one of my boys. He used to be a mechanic in the old days for Burger, Madle, the guys who used to rob banks and stuff." There was an unmistakable note of boyish admiration in Carmen's voice.
"He figured the thing would work like that. Separate the poles and you increase the size of the working area."
"You mean square the operational field. Your idiot doesn't even know mechanics."
"No, but he knows all about how any kind of machine works."
"You call that working?" I demanded. "Do you realize what you have there, Carmen?"
"Sure. A disintegrator ray, straight out of Startling Stories ."
My opinion as to the type of person who followed the pages of science-fiction magazines with fluttering lips and tracing finger was upheld.
I looked at the old warehouse and of course didn't see it.
"What was this a test for?" I asked, fearful of the Frankenstein I had made. "What are you planning to do now?"
"This was no test, Venetti. This was it. I just wiped out Harry Keno and his intimates right in the middle of their confidential squat."
"Good heavens. That's uncouthly old-fashioned of you, Carmen! Why, that's murder ."
"Not," Carmen said, "without no corpus delecti ."
"The body of the crime remains without the body of the victim," I remembered from my early Ellery Queen training.
"You're talking too much, Professor," Tony suggested. "Remember, you did it with your machine."
"Yes," I said at length. "And why are we standing here letting those machines sit there?"
There were two small items of interest to me in the Times the following morning.
One two-inch story—barely making page one because of a hole to fill at the bottom of an account of the number of victims of Indian summer heat prostration—told of the incineration of a warehouse on Fleet Street by an ingenious new arson bomb that left "virtually" no trace. (Maybe the fire inspector had planted a few traces to make his explanation more creditable.)
The second item was further over in a science column just off the editorial page. It told of the government—!—developing a new process of waste disposal rivaling the old Buck Rogers disintegrator ray.
This, I presumed, was one of Tony Carmen's information leaks.
If he hoped to arouse the public into demanding my invention I doubted he would succeed. The public had been told repeatedly of a new radioactive process for preserving food and a painless way of spraying injections through the skin. But they were still stuck with refrigerators and hypodermic needles.
I had forced my way half-way through the paper and the terrible coffee I made when the doorbell rang.
I was hardly surprised when it turned out to be Tony Carmen behind the front door.
He pushed in, slapping a rolled newspaper in his palm. "Action, Professor."
"The district attorney has indicted you?" I asked hopefully.
"He's not even indicted you , Venetti. No, I got a feeler on this plant in the Times ."
I shook my head. "The government will take over the invention, no matter what the public wants."
"The public? Who cares about the public? The Arcivox corporation wants this machine of yours. They have their agents tracing the plant now. They will go from the columnist to his legman to my man and finally to you. Won't be long before they get here. An hour maybe."
"Arcivox makes radios and TV sets. What do they want with the Expendables?"
"Opening up a new appliance line with real innovations. I hear they got a new refrigerator. All open. Just shelves—no doors or sides. They want a revolutionary garbage disposal too."
"Do you own stock in the company? Is that how you know?"
"I own stock in a competitor. That's how I know," Carmen informed me.
"Listen, Professor, you can sell to Arcivox and still keep control of the patents through a separate corporation. And I'll give you 49% of its stock."
This was Carmen's idea of a magnanimous offer for my invention. It was a pretty good offer—49% and my good health.
"But will the government let Arcivox have the machine for commercial use?"
"The government would let Arcivox have the hydrogen bomb if they found a commercial use for it."
There was a sturdy knock on the door, not a shrill ring of the bell.
"That must be Arcivox now," Carmen growled. "They have the best detectives in the business. You know what to tell them?"
I knew what to tell them.
I peeled off my wet shirt and threw it across the corner of my desk, casting a reproving eye at the pastel air-conditioner in the window. It wasn't really the machine's fault—The water department reported the reservoir too low to run water-cooled systems. It would be a day or two before I could get the gas type into my office.
Miss Brown, my secretary, was getting a good look at my pale, bony chest. Well, for the salary she got, she could stand to look. Of course, she herself was wearing a modest one-strap sun dress, not shorts and halters like some of the girls.
"My," she observed "it certainly is humid for March, isn't it, Professor Venetti?"
I agreed that it was.
She got her pad and pencil ready.
"Wheedling form letter to Better Mousetraps. Where are our royalties for the last quarter of the year? We know we didn't have a full three months with our Expendable Field in operation on the new traps, but we want the payola for what we have coming.
"Condescending form letter to Humane Lethal Equipment. Absolutely do not send the California penal system any chambers equipped with our patented field until legislature officially approves them. We got away with it in New Mexico, but we're older and wiser now.
"Rush priority telegram to President, United States, any time in the next ten days. Thanks for citation, et cetera. Glad buddy system working out well in training battlefield disintegrator teams.
"Indignant form letter to Arcivox. We do not feel we are properly a co-respondent in your damage suits. Small children and appliances have always been a problem, viz ice boxes and refrigerators. Suggest you put a more complicated latch on the handles of the dangerously inferior doors you have covering our efficient, patented field."
I leaned back and took a breather. There was no getting around it—I just wasn't happy as a business man. I had been counting on being only a figurehead in the Expendable Patent Holding Corporation, but Tony Carmen didn't like office work. And he hadn't anyone he trusted any more than me. Even.
I jerked open a drawer and pulled off a paper towel from the roll I had stolen in the men's room. Scrubbing my chest and neck with it, I smoothed it out and dropped it into the wastebasket. It slid down the tapering sides and through the narrow slot above the Expendable Field. I had redesigned the wastebaskets after a janitor had stepped in one. But Gimpy was happy now, with the $50,000 we paid him.
I opened my mouth and Miss Brown's pencil perked up its eraser, reflecting her fierce alertness.
Tony Carmen banged open the door, and I closed my mouth.
"G-men on the way here," he blurted and collapsed into a chair opposite Miss Brown.
"Don't revert to type," I warned him. "What kind of G-Men? FBI? FCC? CIA? FDA? USTD?"
"Investigators for the Atomic Energy Commission."
The solemn, conservatively dressed young man in the door touched the edge of his snap-brim hat as he said it.
"Miss Brown, would you mind letting our visitor use your chair?" I asked.
"Not at all, sir," she said dreamily.
"May I suggest," I said, "that we might get more business done if you then removed yourself from the chair first."
Miss Brown leaped to her feet with a healthy galvanic response and quit the vicinity with her usual efficiency.
Once seated, the AEC man said "I'll get right to the point. You may find this troublesome, gentlemen, but your government intends to confiscate all of the devices using your so-called Expendable field, and forever bar their manufacture in this country or their importation."
"You stinking G-men aren't getting away with this," Carmen said ingratiatingly. "Ever hear of the Mafia?"
"Not much," the young man admitted earnestly, "since the FBI finished with its deportations a few years back."
I cleared my throat. "I must admit that the destruction of a multi-billion business is disconcerting before lunch. May we ask why you took this step?"
The agent inserted a finger between his collar and tie. "Have you noticed how unseasonably warm it is?"
"I wondered if you had. You're going to have heat prostration if you keep that suit coat on five minutes more."
The young man collapsed back in his chair, loosening the top button of his ivy league jacket, looking from my naked hide to the gossomer scrap of sport shirt Carmen wore. "We have to dress inconspicuously in the service," he panted weakly.
I nodded understandingly. "What does the heat have to do with the outlawing of the Expendables?"
"At first we thought there might be some truth in the folk nonsense that nuclear tests had something to do with raising the mean temperature of the world," the AEC man said. "But our scientists quickly found they weren't to blame."
"Clever of them."
"Yes, they saw that the widespread use of your machines was responsible for the higher temperature. Your device violates the law of conservation of energy, seemingly . It seemingly destroys matter without creating energy. Actually—"
He paused dramatically.
"Actually, your device added the energy it created in destroying matter to the energy potential of the planet in the form of heat . You see what that means? If your devices continue in operation, the mean temperature of Earth will rise to the point where we burst into flame. They must be outlawed!"
"I agree," I said reluctantly.
Tony Carmen spoke up. "No, you don't, Professor. We don't agree to that."
I waved his protests aside.
"I would agree," I said, "except that it wouldn't work. Explain the danger to the public, let them feel the heat rise themselves, and they will hoard Expendables against seizure and continue to use them, until we do burst into flame, as you put it so religiously."
"Why?" the young man demanded.
"Because Expendables are convenient. There is a ban on frivolous use of water due to the dire need. But the police still have to go stop people from watering lawns, and I suspect not a few swimming pools are being filled on the sly. Water is somebody else's worry. So will be generating enough heat to turn Eden into Hell."
"Mass psychology isn't my strongest point," the young man said worriedly. "But I suspect you may be right. Then—we'll be damned?"
"No, not necessarily," I told him comfortingly. "All we have to do is use up the excess energy with engines of a specific design."
"But can we design those engines in time?" the young man wondered with uncharacteristic gloom.
"Certainly," I said, practising the power of positive thinking. "Now that your world-wide testing laboratories have confirmed a vague fear of mine, I can easily reverse the field of the Expendable device and create a rather low-efficiency engine that consumes the excess energy in our planetary potential."
The agent of the AEC whose name I can never remember was present along
with Tony Carmen the night my assistants finished with the work I had
outlined.
While it was midnight outside, the fluorescents made the scene more
visible than sunlight. My Disexpendable was a medium-sized drum in a
tripod frame with an unturned coolie's hat at the bottom.
Breathlessly, I closed the switch and the scooped disc began slowly to
revolve.
"Is it my imagination," the agent asked, "or is it getting cooler in
here?"
"Professor." Carmen gave me a warning nudge.
There was now something on the revolving disc. It was a bar of some
shiny gray metal.
"Kill the power, Professor," Carmen said.
"Can it be," I wondered, "that the machine is somehow recreating or
drawing back the processed material from some other time or dimension?"
"Shut the thing off, Venetti!" the racketeer demanded.
But too late.
There was now a somewhat dead man sitting in the saddle of the turning
circle of metal.
If Harry Keno had only been sane when he turned up on that
merry-go-round in Boston I feel we would have learned much of immense
value on the nature of time and space.
As it is, I feel that it is a miscarriage of justice to hold me in
connection with the murders I am sure Tony Carmen did commit.
I hope this personal account when published will end the vicious
story supported by the district attorney that it was I who sought Tony
Carmen out and offered to dispose of his enemies and that I sought his
financial backing for the exploitation of my invention.
This is the true, and only true, account of the development of the
machine known as the Expendable.
I am only sorry, now that the temperature has been standardized once
more, that the Expendable's antithesis, the Disexpendable, is of too
low an order of efficiency to be of much value as a power source in
these days of nuclear and solar energy. So the world is again stuck
with the problem of waste disposal ... including all that I dumped
before. But as a great American once said, you can't win 'em all.
If you so desire, you may send your generous and fruitful letters
towards my upcoming defense in care of this civic-minded publication.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Desire No More by Algis Budrys.
Relevant chunks:
He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story follows the journey of Martin Isherwood, a man whose dream is to become a rocket pilot. Everything he does is to reach that dream. When he turns 17, he cuts away from his family and starts to follow his dream. He participates in different plane races in order to become a pilot. He continuously shows his determination to become a pilot to everyone he meets, and doesn’t care what they say. Mostly everyone tells Ish that he should quit on this path, that he has nothing to prove and that there is no reason to continue pursuing his dream. He doesn’t heed this advice and continues convincing people as to why he should be a rocket pilot. At the end, he manages to do the trip, but does it while thinking that he had already done it before, therefore taking out all the excitement that the first trip would have had. He ends up never driving a rocket again, and dies in the rocket station. ",
"Martin Isherwood, as a small young man, tells his father that he is a rocket pilot when his father tells him that he cannot afford to send him to college. His father begins to laugh, and Martin decides to run away. His mother comes in and asks what is wrong, and his father tells her about what their son has claimed as his trade. Margaret is confused, and Howard tries to chase him as Ish hops on a bus and goes away. When the man tells his faculty advisor that he is not interested in a degree, the advisor is exasperated because he has been doing math and engineering for the past nine semesters. Ish says that he is signed up for Astronomy 101, and he tries to argue why this course is different. Ish offers for them to get a beer together instead, since it will be impossible to convince him. He does not understand the advisor’s poetry, and the advisor comments that he is a specialist. The scene then cuts to The Navion taking a boiling thermal under its right wing, buckling suddenly and tilting. Ish tells Nan to relax, but she is afraid of how low he is flying. As Ish does a few more tricks, he suddenly feels fear because the aircraft begins to act strangely. Nan is curious why he is so desperate to win the Vandenberg Cup next week. He reveals that this is all part of his plan of being a rocket pilot, and Nan does not understand. The scene then cuts to four years later, as Ish brings the Mark VII out of her orbit and gives the technicians a report. Nan tells him that he has accomplished his dream, but Ish suddenly feels tired and outraged that the pile of tin can be considered a rocket. The Flight Surgeon then talks to him in another scene, asking if he would like to talk to a man named MacKenzie. Ish agrees, and MacKenzie asks him questions about his personal life. The therapist offers shock therapy, but Martin insists that it did not work. The receptionist at the front desk tries to get him to fill out paperwork too, but he vehemently refuses and complains that he has no time. The scene then cuts to the Personnel Manager meeting him, and they discuss the plans moving forward. The Personnel Manager discusses the rocket some more with him, before the scene cuts to a crew chief waking him up to go to the station. After his trip, MacKenzie is waiting for him at the crew station. MacKenzie tells him that he was hypnotized because his lack of interests and emotions prevented him from being the best. Ish refuses to believe it, and MacKenzie says that he had to cancel the thrill of it by making him experience the Moon and death. Ish dies in space after MacKenzie leaves, having lost his passion while staring at the stars. ",
"At the beginning, as a small boy, Marty Isherwood tells his father that he will be a rocket pilot. The man starts laughing at this, and Marty, infuriated, walks out of their house. His mother, Marge, tries to understand what happened while her son gets on some bus. Later, Martin is older and talking to his faculty advisor about the classes he plans on taking. We learn that the young man has taken almost every math and engineering class and has signed up for astronomy. His advisor doesn’t understand why Martin is avoiding liberal arts classes. They go to a bar where the adviser again wonders what specialty made Martin abandon all the other existing disciplines. Martin assures him there’s a purpose behind it. \nNow Martin is a certified pilot. He’s on the board of the Navion plane with a girl named Nan. He makes the plane dive and tilt, which scares her. At some point, he becomes delusional and brings the plane higher and higher before he finally hears the girl’s screams. Martin tells her he cannot marry her because he is not rich, and it will take years before he becomes a real rocket pilot. Nan doesn’t understand his passion. Years later, Martin manages to spin around the Earth on the ship Mark VII for two days. He’s not satisfied. While walking from the ship, he meets Nan, who tells him that she understands his passion now and is happy he’s done. He becomes angry and says that he’s not finished anything. He talks to a psychiatrist named Mackenzie assigned to him by the Air Force. The man asks questions about his first jobs at the airports near Miami. He makes sure Martin has no family. Then he suddenly shocks him by saying that Martin can’t go - this maddens the pilot. Seconds later, the doctor apologizes, claiming that it was shotgun therapy to check his reactions. Next, Martin argues with some receptionist, trying to convince her to help him get back - apparently, he died. He says he has a job. He forces her to call the Personnel Manager. Martin tells the man that he only has six hours before the flight to the Moon and asks for a postponement so that he could finish the journey. The manager then shows Martin the Earth, and the man realizes he’s standing in one of the lunar craters. Martin finally wakes up just an hour before the launch. He completes the flight but is dissatisfied. Mackenzie meets him in the crew section and explains that he had to hypnotize Martin before the flight, make him believe he had died and had been to the Moon. The Air Force was not sure Martin, who had no ties to the planet and no interests, would’ve come back. The hallucination made the pilot believe he had already been to the Moon, thus taking the adventure out of the actual flight.\n",
"Martin Isherwood, a young man, desiring to be a rocket pilot, cuts his tie to his family around the age of seventeen because his father does not support or believe in his dream. His school advisor also does not understand his choice of taking a similar class because it will teach him how to look at the star differently. The advisor tries to convince him to change his career, but he fails. They go to a bar and chat about Ish's crazy dream.\n\nThe scene then changes to a racing plane where Ish, as a trained pilot, teases the girl Nan sitting beside him. He constantly flies a dangerous route to tease her. After a dangerous flight, he talks about the difficulty of marrying her due to his career, and she questions his career. He gives up on making her understand his ambition and breaks up with her. A week later, he wins the championship of the Vandenberg Cup, which will give him a lot of job opportunities in the pilot market. After several successes in the field, he meets his ex-girlfriend, Nan. She tries to apologize for her inability to understand him, but he does not want to listen. He does not think that she still understands him. He is raged.\n\nThe flight surgeon tells him to sit and calm down. He asks Ish to meet a therapist called MacKenzie. MacKenzie asks Ish some questions casually, and Ish responds appropriately because of the recorder he sees under Mackenzie's lapel. After the conversation, he refuses to fill out the application and yells for the personnel manager to come. The personnel manager tells him that what he thinks is not real. He does not believe it. Then he wakes up from the hallucination of going to the moon. MacKenzie tells him that he never goes to the moon. He dies shortly after that."
] |
40968
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He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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What is the significance of other people's words about the rocket?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Desire No More by Algis Budrys.
Relevant chunks:
He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Question:
What is the significance of other people's words about the rocket?
Answer:
|
[
"One of the greatest challenges that Martin faces in his journey to become a rocket pilot is the negativity that comes from other people. Almost everyone that Martin meets advises him that he is wasting his life, and that he should focus on something more realistic that can allow him to have a family. His parents, his girlfriend, and Mackenzie all tell him that he should settle for a plane pilot or should focus his career on something else, something less risky. These words only help to make Martin more determined to become a pilot, because he wants to prove everyone wrong. ",
"Other people’s words about the rocket is significant because it reveals how far gone Ish already is in comparison to everyone else. When Nan mentions that he has already flown a rocket, Ish yells at her that it is not enough because it is not considered a true rocket. Even when the Flight Surgeon speaks to him, he is mostly impatient about the rocket. When MacKenzie brings up the rocket and his goal later, it shows the significance of what Ish has done to achieve his dream. He has no family, friends, or has formed any sort of meaningful relationship. In addition, he has also never touched another book or literature that was not related to space, math, or engineering. The other people’s words about the rocket only illustrate Ish’s own stunted development out of his obsession with becoming a pilot for it. ",
"People’s comments about a man-carrying rocket that didn’t exist when Martin was a young boy only encouraged him to work harder to achieve his dream. When his dad bursts out laughing at his words about becoming a rocket pilot, little Marty walks away while his parents are ordering him to come back. He remembers their screams when he realizes that he can go to space after the conversation with Mackenzie. When Nan tells him that there are no man-carrying rockets, he says that it’s not his problem, implying that they will be invented at some point and he will be the one who travels to the Moon on one of them. When several years later, she tells him happily that he’s flown his rocket - he becomes angry. Martin shows that he’s way more obsessed now and doesn’t really care about the means of transport that will take him to the Moon. What he cares about is the thrill of the unknown. ",
"Throughout the story, whenever Martin Isherwood, a trained pilot who has been dreaming of going to the moon, talks about his dream, people either do not believe in him or misunderstand him. When people try to convince Martin to pursue another career or face reality, they always say that there is no man-carrying rocket in the world, to which Martin always responds with an answer that it is not his problem. However, these words suggest that Martin's dream is unfulfillable initially, but he does not believe in it and keeps his pursuit until his death. These words about the nonexistence of the man-carrying rocket imply the consequence of the story that all of Martin's journey is imaginary and hallucinated. His dream ends up being a joke to himself."
] |
40968
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He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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Who is Nan, and what happens to her?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Desire No More by Algis Budrys.
Relevant chunks:
He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Question:
Who is Nan, and what happens to her?
Answer:
|
[
"Nan is a woman, who for a while is Martin Isherwood’s girlfriend. She owns a racing plane, which Ish uses to win a race and continue his plan to become a rocket pilot. When she and Ish go on a practice flight, Ish almost crashes them because for a second he wanted the plane all the way to the moon. For a while she wanted to get married to him, but he never reciprocated the feeling because he was too focused on flying to the moon, and ended up driving her away. The story insinuates that they broke up after Ish orbited the earth on a ship. ",
"Nan is Ish’s ex-lover and a pretty brunette girl. Initially, Ish takes her on his plane and often scares her because he is willing to do whatever it takes to become a rocket pilot. Nan finds it difficult to understand his obsession with winning the Vandenberg Cup, as he is already a trained pilot and can probably find even better employment somewhere else. However, Ish believes that it is his life and part of the reason why he cannot get married. She tries to explain that being a rocket pilot is unrealistic, but he only ignores her and is determined. Later, Nan comes to greet Ish four years later after he brings the Mark VII out of orbit. She congratulates him on flying the rocket and apologizes for not understanding earlier how much it all meant to him. One of the technicians tries to pull Nan away when Ish feels tired. He has an outburst at her about the rocket until the guards come. Later, Nan is not mentioned again as Ish explains that he has no woman anymore. However, it is noted that the receptionist he talks to resembles Nan. ",
"Nan was Martin’s girlfriend when he was a certified plane pilot. She’s on the board of the Navion when they go through the turbulence zone. Martin decides to tease her and dips the nose of the plane in a shallow dive, terrifying her even more. Seconds later, Martin seems to lose the connection with reality and starts bringing the plane higher in the air. Nan screams his name several times before he realizes what he’s doing and stops the rapid movement upwards. Martin then tells her he cannot marry her because he doesn’t have any stable source of income, and she might as well end up a poor widow. She asks him why he has to win the Vandenberg cup. Martin explains that the victory will allow him to get the Chief Test Pilot’s job, but becoming the first rocket pilot will take more than that. In reply, she can only remind him that there aren’t any man-carrying rockets yet. Next, we see Nan four years later when she breaks out of the press section and runs to Martin, who has just finished his orbital flight. She apologizes for not understanding how much this dream meant to him. She is glad he has flown his rocket - this phrase shocks Martin and makes him outraged. He angrily screams at her terrified face that he doesn’t care what takes him to the Moon, but he hasn’t been there yet. The guards pull her away from him. ",
"Nan is the girl who sits in the Navion, a racing plane owned by Ish. She has short dark hair and white skin. She is teased by Ish's flying skill when they ride on the Navion together. She seems to be his girlfriend. She tries to convince Ish that he may change his career, but her words rage Ish. She breaks up with him. After four years, she sees his success and realizes her immaturity beforehand, so she tries to redeem the relationship. She breaks through the press section, trying to apologize to Ish, but Ish is raged by her word. She is terrified. The security comes and gets her away."
] |
40968
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He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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Who is Martin Isherwood, and what are his characteristics?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Desire No More by Algis Budrys.
Relevant chunks:
He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
Question:
Who is Martin Isherwood, and what are his characteristics?
Answer:
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[
"Martin Isherwood is the main character of the story. He only wants one thing in life, which is to drive a rocket to the moon. Everything he does in his life is to reach that goal, he pushes everyone away. He pushes away his parents and his girlfriend because they didn’t understand the dream he was trying to accomplish. He is described as very determined, as he only has one thing in mind. He is also very stubborn, doesn’t heed the advice of others and also is described as irritable. ",
"Martin Isherwood starts off as a boy who wants to become a rocket pilot. At age seventeen, he is one hundred and two pounds, four feet eleven, and had just run away from home. Ish is very stubborn, refusing to take any other class that is not math or engineering. Even when his advisor tries to make him change his mind, he refuses until the very end. Ish is very clueless outside of rocket piloting, completely unaware of how the advisor references poetry or any forms of literature. He later grows to around five feet and also becomes somewhat of a daredevil. When Nan and him are in the plane, he purposely does tricks that he knows will scare her. He, however, becomes obsessed with being a rocket pilot to the point where he abandons his family and has no friends. Ish eventually becomes very impatient and snappy too, refusing to believe anything else that does not involve rockets or piloting. He is so passionate about his dream that he is willing to disregard everything else that makes him human. It is so dangerous that MacKenzie has to have him hypnotized in order for him to stay grounded. ",
"Martin Isherwood is a trained rocket pilot who has been dreaming of harnessing space since early childhood. He is very determined and ambitious. We can see that even when he is just a child who is ready to oppose his father’s opinion. He seems fearless and playful when he’s on the Navion with Nan. He teases her and talks about the possibility of marriage in the distant future. But eventually, his fanaticism replaces all the other emotions. When he meets her again, he can only think about his flight, his space dream, not her. Martin doesn't talk to his family, has no romantic partner, and there is no mention of any of his friends. He becomes obsessed with space, with the flight to the Moon. Space travel becomes the main reason why Martin is alive. And when the illusion takes the thrill out of his flight, he dies from dissatisfaction, a lack of a real purpose in life. \n",
"Martin Isherwood is the son of Howard Isherwood and Margaret Isherwood. He is a rocket pilot who has set his dream since his childhood. His pursuit of being a rocket pilot is very perseverant and does not allow any doubts or unsupported. Due to this persistence and stubbornness, he shuts himself off from any relationships or entertainment in life, leading that the meaning of his life is only to be a rocket pilot. He is easily outraged by the words or actions of questioning or misunderstanding his ambition. Until the end of the story, where he learns that he has been hypnotized to imagine landing on the moon, he finally gives up the rocket pilot dream and feels betrayed by it."
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He had but one ambition, one desire: to pilot the first manned rocket to the moon. And he was prepared as no man had ever prepared himself before....
DESIRE NO MORE
by Algis Budrys
( illustrated by Milton Luros )
" Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.... "
—Chaucer
THE SMALL young man looked at his father, and shook his head.
"But you've got to learn a trade," his father said, exasperated. "I can't afford to send you to college; you know that."
"I've got a trade," he answered.
His father smiled thinly. "What?" he asked patronizingly.
"I'm a rocket pilot," the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks.
His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. "Yeah," he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle.
"A rocket pilot!" His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlor. "A ro— oh, no! —a rocket pilot !"
The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set white bar, and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlor, through the hall, out the front door, to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little.
" Marty! " His father's shout followed him out of the parlor. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder-blades, because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs.
"What is it, Howard?" Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her housedress.
"Crazy kid," Howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. " Come back here! " he shouted. "A rocket pilot," he cursed under his breath. "What's the kid been reading? Claiming he's a rocket pilot!"
Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown.
"But—isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days, but it seems to me...."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet! Come back here, you idiot! " Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the ends of his stiffly-held arms.
"Are you sure, Howard?" his wife asked faintly.
"Yes, I'm sure !"
"But, where's he going?"
" Stop that! Get off that bus! YOU hear me? Marty?"
" Howard! Stop acting like a child and talk to me! Where is that boy going?"
Howard Isherwood, stocky, red-faced, forty-seven, and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. "I don't know," he told her bitterly, between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs.
"Maybe, the moon," he told her sarcastically.
Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot, weight 102, height 4', 11", had come of age at seventeen.
THE SMALL man looked at his faculty advisor. "No," he said. "I am not interested in working for a degree."
"But—" The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. "Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?"
"I'm signed up for Astronomy 101," Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. "A snap course. A breather, after you've studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?"
Isherwood shook his head. "Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won't be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves." Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. "Still a snap. What's the difference, how you look at a star?"
Isherwood almost winced. "Call it a hobby," he said. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, Dave. You're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer."
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. "Crazy," he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
"Though I go bare, take ye no care, I am nothing a-cold; I stuff my skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old."
"Huh?" Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. "It's a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact."
"Oh."
"Don't you give a damn?" the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. "Sorry, Dave, but no. It's not my racket."
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass.
"Strictly a specialist, huh?"
Ish nodded. "Call it that."
"But what , for Pete's sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?"
Ish took a swallow of his beer. "Well, now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done."
The advisor's lips twisted in derision. "That's pretty fanatical, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
THE NAVION took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward suddenly, tilting at the same time, so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side-by-side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades, and corrected with a tilt of the wheel.
"Relax, Nan," he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter.
"It's only air; nasty old air."
The girl patted her short hair back into place. "I wish you wouldn't fly this low," she said, half-frightened.
" Low? Call this low?" Ish teased. "Here. Let's drop it a little, and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going." He nudged the wheel forward, and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out thirty feet above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and, from the cockpit, the Everglades resolved into a dirty-green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream.
"Marty!"
Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer, anyway. He tugged back on the wheel suddenly, targeting a cumulous bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal.
And, suddenly, it was as if there were no girl beside him, to be teased, and no air to rock the wings—there were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. "Up," he grunted through his clenched teeth. His fists locked on the wheel. "Up!"
The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going. "Up." If he listened closely, in just the right way, he could almost hear ...
"Marty!"
... the rumble of a louder, prouder engine than the Earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft leveled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands. Still half-lost, he turned and looked at the white-faced girl. "Scare you—?" he asked gently.
She nodded. Her fingertips were trembling on his forearm.
"Me too," he said. "Lost my head. Sorry."
"LOOK," HE told the girl, "You got any idea of what it costs to maintain a racing-plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo, my ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged ten years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week? You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while."
Nan's eyes clouded, and her lips trembled. "That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg Cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot."
He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed—more—he slumped—and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died, it would not return to life, but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know.
"I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot," he said quietly. "The Foo Is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States—Douglas, North American, Boeing— any of them—and pick up the Chief Test Pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that—" His voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off, and shrugged. "I've told you all this before."
The girl reached up, as if the physical touch could bring him back to her, and put her fingers around his wrist. "Darling!" she said. "If it's that rocket pilot business again...."
Somehow, his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. "It's always 'that rocket pilot business,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world! I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody the Air Force or Navy have! I can use words like brennschluss and mass-ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers , and I—" He stopped himself, half-smiled, and shrugged again.
"I guess I was kidding myself. After the Cup, there'll be the test job, and after that, there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time."
All she could think of to say was, "But, Darling, there aren't any man-carrying rockets."
"That's not my fault," he said, and walked away from her.
A week later, he took his stripped-down F-110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest.
HE BROUGHT the Mark VII out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning Earth, and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red-eyed, and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones. And he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes, and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him.
Nan could see that. Four years ago, he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky.
She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. "Marty!" She brushed past a technician.
He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. "Well, Nan!" he mumbled. But he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Marty," she said in a rush. "I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant." Her face was flushed, and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her.
"But it's all right, now. You got your rockets. You've done it. You trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket!"
He looked up at her face and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away, and Ish made no move to stop him.
Suddenly, he was tired, there was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite.
"Rocket!" he shouted into her terrified face. " Rocket! Call that pile of tin a rocket?" He pointed at the weary Mark VII with a trembling arm.
"Who cares about the bloody machines ! If I thought roller-skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was seventeen! It's getting there that counts! Who gives a good goddam how it's done, or what with!"
And he stood there, shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her.
"SIT DOWN, Ish," the Flight Surgeon said.
They always begin that way , Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down. What for? Did somebody really believe that anything he might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did, and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen hours, thirty-six minutes, and four days to go.
"How's it?" the FS asked.
Ish grinned and shrugged. "All right." But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little.
"Think you'll make it?"
Deliberately, rather than automatically, he fell back into his usual response-pattern. "Don't know. That's what I'm being paid to find out."
"Uh- huh ." The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth.
"Look—you want to talk to a man for a while?"
"What man?" It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing, somehow, on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it.
"Fellow named MacKenzie. Big gun in the head-thumping racket." The Flight Surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. "Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact," he said. "Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast."
"Don't want any hole-heads denting it up on them, huh?" Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with a snap of the lid. "Sure. Bring him on."
The FS smiled. "Good. He's—uh—he's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?"
"Sure." Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the Flight Surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest.
MacKENZIE didn't seem to be taking any notes, or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button-mike of a portable tape-recorder nestling under the man's lapel.
"Been working your own way for the last seventeen years, haven't you?" MacKenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice.
Ish nodded.
"How's that?"
The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said "Yes" for the recorder's benefit.
"Odd jobs, first of all?"
"Something like that. Anything I could get, the first few months. After I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops."
"Out at the airports around Miami, mostly, wasn't it?"
"Ahuh."
"Took some of your pay in flying lessons."
"Right."
MacKenzie's face passed no judgements—he simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man—only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally, he pushed a tired strand of washed-out hair away from his forehead.
Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him He was dangerous—red-letter dangerous—because of it.
"No family."
Ish shrugged. "Not that I know of. Cut out at seventeen. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them."
Ish knew the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. MacKenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression—but it still passed no judgements.
"How's things between you and the opposite sex?"
"About normal."
"No wife—no steady girl."
"Not a very good idea, in my racket."
MacKenzie grunted. Suddenly, he sat bolt upright in his chair, and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out, and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. "You can't go!"
Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins. "What!" he roared.
MacKenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief commanding burst was over, and his face was apologetic, "Sorry," he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. "Shotgun therapy. Works best, sometimes. You can go, all right; I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives."
Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him—anger, and more fear than he wanted to admit. "I'm due at a briefing," he said tautly.
"You through with me?"
MacKenzie nodded, still embarrassed. "Sorry."
Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. "Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc. They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy, hell! Testing maybe, but you sure didn't do anything to help me!"
"I don't know," MacKenzie said softly. "I wish I did."
Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. Twelve hours, twenty-two minutes, and four days to go.
Damn! He was late for the briefing. Odd—that fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time.
He shrugged. What difference did it make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going. He was going, and if there were faint echoes of "Marty!" ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now.
ISH LOOKED up bitterly at the Receptionist. "No," he said.
"But everybody fills out an application," she protested.
"No. I've got a job," he said as he had been saying for the last half hour.
The Receptionist sighed. "If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled."
"Look, Honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now, let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back."
"But nobody goes back."
"Goddam it, I don't know what kind of place this is, but—" He stopped at the Receptionist's wince, and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were IN and OUT and HOLD baskets on the desk, and the Receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room—a big room, he realized—seemed to fade out at the edges, rather than stop at walls. The lighting, too....
"Let's see your back!" he rapped out, his voice high.
She sighed in exasperation. "If you'd read the literature ..." She swiveled her chair slowly.
"No wings," he said.
"Of course not!" she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. "No horns, either."
"Streamlined, huh?" he said bitterly.
"It's a little different for everybody," she said with unexpected gentleness. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe, and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, forty-seven minutes, and no days to go.
"Who do I see?"
She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. "See?"
"About getting out of here! Come on, come on," he barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. "I haven't got much time."
She smiled sweetly. "Oh, but you do."
"Can it! Who's your Section boss? Get him down here. On the double. Come on!" His face was streaming with perspiration but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him.
Her lips closed into an angry line, and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. "I'll call the Personnel Manager."
"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd, the way the Receptionist looked a little like Nan.
THE PERSONNEL Manager wore a perfectly-tailored suit. He strode across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched.
"Martin Isherwood!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm very glad to meet you!"
"I'll bet," Ish said dryly, giving the Personnel Manager's hand a short shake. "I've got other ideas. I want out."
"That's all he's been saying for the past forty-five minutes, Sir," the Receptionist said from behind her desk.
The Personnel Manager frowned. "Um. Yes. Well, that's not unprecedented."
"But hardly usual," he added.
Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he—shucks?—the Receptionist wasn't such a bad girl, either. He smiled at her. "Sorry I lost my head," he said.
She smiled back. "It happens."
He took time to give her one more smile and a half-wink, and swung back to the Personnel Manager.
"Now. Let's get this thing straightened out. I've got—" He stopped to look at his watch. "Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now."
"Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut?"
Ish shook his head. "I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Look—you feel you've got a job unfinished. Or, anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But, let's face it—that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to."
Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. "Don't put words in my mouth!" he snapped. "Just get me back, and we'll split hairs about it when I get around this way again." Suddenly, he found himself pleading. "All I need is a week," he said. "It'll be a rough week—no picnic, no pleasures of the flesh. No smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, putter around for two days, and back again. Then, you can do anything you want to—as long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course."
The Personnel Manager hesitated. "Suppose—" he began, but Ish interrupted him.
"Look, they need it, down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have—but what am I telling you for. If you don't know, who does?"
The Personnel Manager smiled. "I was about to say something."
Ish stopped, abashed. "Sorry."
He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?"
"Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all."
"How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something.
"Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing.
"Earth," the Personnel Manager said.
Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night.
He looked around him. The Moon was silent—quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited.
Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navion at, that day over the Everglades.
"It's not the same," he said.
The Personnel Manager sighed.
"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."
The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."
Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."
"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.
"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder.
"Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."
Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.
"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.
"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.
Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.
The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.
He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.
He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.
"It was easy," he said over a world-wide network, and pushed the press representatives out of his way.
MacKENZIE was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead.
"Ish."
It was MacKenzie, bending over him.
Ish grunted.
"It wasn't any good was it? You'd done it all before; you'd been there."
He was past emotions. "Yeah?"
"We couldn't take the chance." MacKenzie was trying desperately to explain. "You were the best there was—but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot—nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text; you've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish! "
"So?"
"There was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going."
He remembered the time with the Navion , and nodded. "I might have."
"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. Now get out before I kill you. "
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again—he died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected without note.
This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Control Group by Roger D. Aycock.
Relevant chunks:
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins on a spaceship called the Marco Four. It is working on Ringwave generators and hangs inside the orbit of a dun-colored moon of the green planet Alphard Six. This ship has several tools, including a magnoscanner, the Zero Interval Transfer computer, and a screen that shows the surface of the planet. Then Farrell gets on a helihopper and soon crashes. The next day he wakes up in an infirmary with white walls, tables, lockers, chests, and some unfamiliar chemical odor. It is one of the rooms of the ancient ship located in the central square of the town on Alphard Six. Farrell then walks down a bare corridor with a metal floor and rare open ports that let in a flood of reddish sunlight. He goes through storage rooms, hydroponics gardens, a gymnasium, a nursery, and a power room. He also notices the Marco Four parked near the square.\n",
"The story is initially set on the Marco Four, which is flying in the atmosphere of the Alphard Six. The ship has many controls, including a Ringwave generator, magnoscanner, and a Zero Interval Transfer computer. There is also an area for sleeping on the ship as well. Alphard Six itself is described to have a cool green disk and an airy jewel compared to the other areas. The planet itself is mostly uninhabited, but there is an island about three hundred miles in diameter that has signs of being habited. On the island, there are twenty-seven agrarian hamlets surrounded by cultivated fields. There is also a city with a thousand buildings and a central square. There is also a primitive spaceship there as well. When Farrell awakens later, he finds himself on a narrow bed in a whitely antiseptic infirmary. The infirmary is cluttered with tables, lockers, and chests full of material. When the medic guides him later, Farrell sees storage rooms, hydroponics gardens, a small gymnasium, and a nursery. ",
"This story is set within Alphard Six, one of the many inner planets. These planets have been explored, colonzied, and abandoned by Terrans, the Hymenops, and the Bees. Alphard Six is not unreclaimed nor uninhabited and are home to the Alphardians, who reside in hamlets on the planet. \n\nThis story also takes place on the ship, the Marco Four. It is where discussions between the crewmates occur as they debate the origins and potential inhabitants of Alphard Six. ",
"The story happens on the planet Alphard Six. There are barren, desolated lands and swamplands on the planet. The planet looks uninhabitable except for a large island. Twenty-seven small farmhouses are surrounded by the cultivated fields on the island, surrounded by the forest. There is a city strewn with many buildings, the center of which is a square that rests a damaged spaceship of a size ten times larger than Marco Four. The damaged spaceship is used for the power supply in the city. Streets stretch out from the square in order."
] |
24949
|
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
|
Who is Farrell and what happens to him throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Control Group by Roger D. Aycock.
Relevant chunks:
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
Question:
Who is Farrell and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Arthur Farrell is the ship’s navigator, the youngest and most impulsive member of the crew. He tries to convince captain Stryker to land on Alphard Six, claiming that it cannot be inhabited. Stryker doesn’t agree and orders Farrell to find a reconnaissance spiral. After the torpedo explodes near the ship, they all discuss who the attackers could be. Farrell points out that there was no sign of life on Alphard Six around the year 3000, so the inhabitants appeared after this. Farrell agrees to be sent to the planet’s surface and explore. They continue talking and soon see an ancient ship in the center of the planet’s town. Farrell is quick to state that it couldn’t have come from Earth because it would've taken hundreds of years to travel here, and the ship’s ancient technology is not effective enough for such a voyage. Irritated, he interrupts the discussion and suggests he and Xavier go down and see who the inhabitants are. Farrell flies in a helihopper and notices a bonfire near the town. He starts reporting when the helihopper’s carriage crumples, an electric discharge blinds Farrell, and he momentarily loses consciousness. Later, he wakes up with a brutal headache in an infirmary inside the ancient ship. A medic with anachronistic spectacles and gray hair uses unintelligible words and gestures to Farrell to follow him. They pass several open ports, and he sees Xavier’s scouter and later the Marco Four. Shocked, he runs to the spaceship and takes off, when unexpectedly Stryker appears near him, ordering him to take the ship down. Soon Gibson explains that Farrell piloted into metallic power lines, and the crash put him out for almost a day. These Alphardians are incredibly friendly. The object the crew considered a torpedo was actually an emergency boat the inhabitants sent to the spaceship to make sure the people on board noticed their colony. Their spaceship’s technology set off the atomic engines of the boat, making it explode. Gibson and Xavier recognized an old language of frequency modulation the night before, heard about Farrell’s crash, and landed the ship to help. It turns out that the expedition that left Terra for Sirius in 2171 perished soon, and the Bees brought the spacecraft here. They also brought some people from their peripheral colonies conditioned to believe themselves descendants of the expedition. They have been let alone. Farrell understands that the Bees were trying to monitor this group and understand humans’ logic, but they never did. \n\n",
"Navigator Arthur Farrell is part of the Terran Reclamations crew on the Marco Four ship. He is part of a three-man crew with a mechanical named Xavier. Farrell is also considered to be the youngest and most impulsive member of the crew; he also jumps to conclusions quickly and often gets corrected by either Stryker or Gibson. At the beginning of the story, Farrell is excited to go to the Alphard Six and almost forgets about the reconnaissance spiral. He tries to prove that the planet was never unreclaimed, even though the other two members are much more cautious in case there are traces left behind by the Bees. When they discuss what could be on the planet, Farrell continues to argue that the Bees never colonized Six. He also says that they might have all been the victims of a joint hallucination. He later volunteers to do the field work with Xavier, as he is sick of staying on the ship with either of the other two men. Farrell later goes down on the helihopper and goes past a hamlet when a blinding flare of electric discharge knocks him out. He later wakes up in an infirmary and believes he was taken by the enemy. However, as the medic leads him out, he realizes that these people are a result of one of the old ventures. Farrell mistakenly believes that the Marco Four is grounded too, which is why he runs to the ship and pushes a few buttons to take off. Later, however, he is reprimanded for his actions and explained that the people here mean no harm. ",
"Arthur Farrell is the navigator and the youngest in the Terran Reclamations crew aboard the Marco Four. He is described to be impatient and impulsive but eager. Assigned to investigate the unknown colony they encounter, he disembarks into a helihopper to determine the planet's origins and inhabitants. As he begins to pull back, he passes over a hamlet and the helihopper suddenly crashes as Farrell falls unconscious. \n\nWhen he awakens, he finds himself in an infirmary and presumes himself to be prisoner. Following the medic out of the infirmary, Farrell marvels at the succession of rooms like the hydroponics garden and nursery that convinces him that previous old ventures on colonization had indeed succeeded. However, he is worried his fellow crewmates have been captured as well. When he sees the grounded ship, his fears comes true and he impulsively rushes aboard the ship to fly them away. Stopped short by Stryker, he soon finds out that no one was shot down by the colony. Instead, Farrell himself had flown into an electrical line and knocked himself out. In addition, the colony was friendly and eager to return to Terra with the crew, as they had been hoping for a while. ",
"Farrell is the navigator on the spaceship Marco Four. He is the youngest and the most impulsive among the crew. He is also called Arthur. He attempts to planetfall the unobserved planet without scouting at first. He does not recognize the importance of the Reclamations Handbook. After getting struck, Farrell volunteers to investigate the planet and the primitive village. When they find out the damaged spaceship on the land uses continuous atomic fission to supply power, they are astonished. Farrell teases Stryker with the hypothesis that the people below are humanoid. Farrell uses the helihopper to investigate the land, with Xavier’s scouter scouting ahead of him. When he reaches the field, he is struck by the power lines used to transmit electricity in the city and passes out. He is in an infirmary room when he wakes up, and an anachronistic man comes in. Farrell thinks that all the other crew members are captive when he sees their spaceship land with the port open. As all the assumptions become more apparent in his head, he dashes to the Marco Four and rises it up. Disrupted by Stryker, he drives the spaceship down again. Farrell learns from Stryker that all their hypotheses are wrong, and these people are harmless and primitive as they had thought."
] |
24949
|
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Control Group by Roger D. Aycock.
Relevant chunks:
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story is set in the fourth millennium, and humans have invented a technology - the Ringwave propulsion-communication principle - that allows them to explore the neighboring cosmic systems. In the past, they were invaded by an alien species called Hymenops, or the Bees, who enslaved Terrans, and tried to colonize other planets but unexpectedly left years later. The crew members of the spaceship Marco Four are on a mission looking for the slave colonies that were abandoned by the Bees. Farrell, the navigator, is arguing with captain Stryker, Gibson - an engineer - and Xavier, the ship’s mechanic, and is trying to convince them to land on Alphard Six and claiming the planet is not inhabited. Stryker reminds him about the importance of vigilance on unexplored territories and tells Farrell to find a reconnaissance spiral. Something resembling an atomic torpedo explodes near the ship, rocking it. Later, the crew starts discussing who can possibly live on Alphard Six. They know that in the year 3000, there was no one on the planet. The ones who attacked them might be the Hymenopes or some Terrans enslaved by them, or even an unknown alien culture. The screen shows a town with a thousand buildings and a prehistoric ship with rocket propulsion. This ship seems to be eleven hundred years old, which is puzzling. This atomic-powered spaceship neither could’ve been constructed here nor could it have successfully traveled for hundreds of years. The area around Alphard Six was guarded by the Bees for several hundred years. So, it would be impossible for this ancient Terran ship to land on the planet without being detected by them. Farrell interrupts the discussion and suggests they go down and look. He gets on a helihopper, and Xavier quickly disappears in his scouter. The two other crew members left on the ship say that they just detected an electromagnetic vibration. Farrell notices a bonfire near the town. He is ready to report it when his helihopper suddenly jerks, a flare of electric discharge blinds him, and Farrell loses consciousness. He wakes up in an infirmary. A doctor speaks in unintelligible words and gestures to Farrell to follow him. While walking through the corridors of the ancient ship, he notices Xavier’s scouter, and later the Marco Four. Shocked, Farrell rapidly plunges inside the spaceship, and it darts up when suddenly Stryker appears from the sleeping cubicle and orders him to fly back. Gibson explains that Farrell piloted his helihopper into power lines and crashed. The Alphardians tried to communicate with the crew using an electromagnetic wave language and never attacked them. The Bees made the ancestors of these people believe that they were the descendants of an Earth expedition that perished a thousand years ago. The Alphardians don’t even know the Hymenops. Apparently, the Bees wanted to monitor the human species in a natural habitat. But they never understood human logic and after all, left all their colonies. ",
"Navigator Arthur Farrell is considered the youngest and most impulsive of the three-man Terran Reclamations crew. The crew has gone to the Alphard Six, which has a cool green disk. The other members of the crew are Stryker, Gibson, and Xavier. Stryker berates Farrell and begins citing the Reclamations Handbook about the rules regarding unreclaimed worlds. Farrell argues that it was never colonized, while Gibson looks up from his chess game and says there is no point in taking a chance of not encountering any of the Hymenops. Farrell says that they will never see a Hymenop, but Stryker says that he fought them for the better half of the century and still does not understand how they behave. They decide to find a reconnaissance spiral, despite Farrell grumbling. They examine whether anything is damaged on the Marco Four, after an explosion, and find that the only component that requires fixing is the Zero Transfer computer. Gibson explains that they cannot be Hymenops since the Bees put their faith in Ringwave energy fields. Although Stryker proposes colonists migrating from somewhere else, Gibson explains that it is impossible for the human slaves of the Hymenops to develop interstellar travel in four generations. Farrell volunteers to go down for the field work; Xavier announces that the planet is uninhabited except for a large island. There is a central city with a thousand buildings, and Farrell is relieved they are human. The power the people use runs on continuous fission, which surprises everyone. It is quite surprising for the crew to see an eleven-hundred year old Terran ship land on the planet. Stryker explains to Farrell that it had to be flown here because there are no materials on Alphard Six to create it. Gibson believes that the ship was built during the Twenty-second century, even though the atomic wars destroyed all historical records. Farrell decides that the only way is to go down and see for themselves. Xavier picks up an electromagnetic vibration pattern, and Farrell reports that he is passing over a hamlet nearest to the city. Suddenly, he is hit by an electric discharge and wakes up in an infirmary. A man comes and takes him out, despite speaking a different language, and he realizes that one of the old ventures had actually succeeded. He sees that the Marco Four has been grounded too and runs to the ship before pushing some controls to take off again. Stryker brings the ship down again, and Farrell is shocked because he thought they were shot down. It turns out that the Alphardians had been trying to send a distress signal. Gibson further explains that they had come from one of the first Bee colonies and were led to believe that their ship missed Sirius; however, the colonists are excited to enjoy assimilation. Although the Bees tried to set up the experiment to understand humans, the invaders failed at truly understanding them. ",
"This story follows a Terran Reclamations crew aboard the Marco Four as they search for Terran colonies previously enslaved and since abandoned by the Bees. As they travel around, a sudden atomic fire hits the ship and the crew hurry to figure out where it had come from and who potentially caused it. Debating between Hymenops, resurgent colonists, trans-Alphardians, or even a joint hallucination, the crew decide to investigate further. Xavier, the mechanical, surveys the planet and finds the landscape to be Terran, though with primitive technology at best. These findings leave them more confused than before, as they then debate how an eleven hundred years old ship could be there. \n\nDeciding then to investigate first-hand and see, Farrell goes into the helihopper and enters the colony. Just as Gibson encourages to go forward as it seems like the colony is communicating with them, Farrell crashes into an electrical line and falls unconscious. As he wakes up, Farrell is met by an unfamiliar medic and follows him out to a well-formed colony, marvelling at the presumed success of old ventures. However, he panics when he sees the Marco Four grounded and presumes his crewmates are in danger, and so he hurriedly rushes onboard and puts it in flight. Stryker stumbles out and takes them back down as Gibson quickly explains to Farrell the situation. It turns out that there is no danger at hand - the crash that landed Farrell unconscious was just an electrical line for the colony's hamlets. The colony, the Alphardians, are friendly and excited to be found. Although using Terran architecture and technology, these Alphardians were experimental human subjects by the Hymenops and observed by the Bees. The Bees chose to abandon their control colony when the Alphardians didn't show much - much like the old tale of Terrans not understanding alien culture either. In the end, the Alphardians are excited to assimilate into Terran colonists. ",
"A Terran Reclamation crew arrives Alphard Six to find Terran colonies enslaved and abandoned by the Bees, or Hymenops, an alien species who retreated a hundred years ago. When the youngest navigator, Farrell, attempts to planetfall without scouting the planet, the captain, Stryker, reminds him of the possible danger of the planet and the necessity of reconnaissance. After arguing with other crew members, Farrell finally accepts to scout the unobserved world first. However, they are suddenly attacked by a thing rising from the land below. After the examination, Gibson, the engineer, announces that the only damage is Zero Interval Transfer Computer, used to operate the Transfer jump in space. The repairing time takes a couple of hours. Stryker worries about the possible attack during the repairing time, so they dispute the potential situation of the planet, and none of the hypotheses, such as the Hymenops’ colorizations, Earthmen’s ancient colonization, or the resurgent Terran colonization, hold based on technological development. Stryker concludes that they have to investigate the land themselves. Farrell volunteers to be the one. They see the ground through magnoscanner, finding a damaged spaceship that served as a power supply with the prehistoric technology, namely atomic fission. According to Gibson, the atomic-powered ship was no longer built after the atomic wars in the twenty-second century; the damaged ship must either be flown or be built on the planet. His hypothesis is rejected by Stryker and Farrell based on the impossibility of the long-range travel capability of the atomic-powered spaceship. They continue their endless debate until Farrell takes the helihopper to investigate. Xavier, the mechanic, uses his drone to scout ahead of Farrell, but soon the scouter is detected by the people on the planet. They try to communicate with them with the electron beam. When Farrell reaches the end of the forest, entering the fields, he is suddenly struck and passes out. When he wakes up, he is in an infirmary; an anachronistic man comes in. He talks and gestures unintelligibly, but Farrell follows him out, seeing Xavier’s scouter with port open. When Farrell follows the man, he sees Marco Four landed with the port open. Held by the guess that these people may possess higher technology and capture all of them, Farrell rushes into Marco Four, closes the port, and rises. Stryker appears and comes to him with bewilderment, driving the spaceship to land again. It is later explained that Hymenops take these people as the experimental object. The damaged ship was an expedition ship, which failed its duty. Hymenops found its derelict during their invasion and colonization of Terran planets. They put these people on the planet, made them believe that their ancestors were the crewmembers of the damaged ship, and conducted this experiment as a control group, compared to other experiments on other planets."
] |
24949
|
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
|
Who is Stryker and what are his characteristics?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Control Group by Roger D. Aycock.
Relevant chunks:
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
Question:
Who is Stryker and what are his characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"Stryker is a crew member of the Marco Four, nominally captain of the group sent on a mission to locate the Terran slaves that were abandoned by the Bees. He seems experienced, calm, and disciplined, always following the Reclamation Handbook. Stryker has fought the Hymenops and spent a lot of time trying to understand their behavior. He values his team and doesn’t want to risk them or their ship in the search for the unknown and, for example, was ready to pull Xavier back when they just detected the waves, fearing it could be something lethal. He appreciates Farrell’s eagerness to find the new and enjoys bantering with him; he also respects other crew members, like Gibson and Xavier, and attentively listens to them when they discuss the origin of the atomic-powered ship. Stryker is intelligent enough to determine that this ancient ship couldn’t have been constructed on this planet - it was brought from somewhere else.\n",
"Lee Stryker is one of the other members of the Terran Reclamations crew. He is the one with experience fighting the Hymenops and always cautious of any remains of the enemy. Stryker is also very careful too, constantly citing lines from the Reclamations Handbook on the ship or to Farrell. He enjoys proving Farrell wrong as well, knowing how impulsive the younger member is in most situations. Stryker’s cautiousness does come in handy, as they do get into an explosion later on while in the atmosphere of the Alphard Six. Even though he is very cautious and knowledgeable, there are times where he becomes impatient out of curiosity. However, Stryker is a lot more reasonable than Farrell, rushing to land the ship again after Farrell starts it. He takes the time to explain to Farrell about their current situation as well. ",
"Stryker is the captain of the Marco Four and the crew. He is described to be the most knowledgeable, not only in regard to the Reclamations Handbook but also first hand, as he had fought the Hymenops. Physically, he has a bare fringe and a fat face. \n\nHe is intelligent as he leads the crew in theorising multiple explanations for the explosion as well as the potential inhabitants of the planet they encounter, as well as later deescalating Farrell's fear later on in the story. ",
"Stryker is the captain of the Terran Reclamation crew Marco Four. He has a Reclamations Handbook that he constantly checks. He fought with the Bees before and learned that humans and the Bees, an alien species, would never understand each other. He is also called Lee by Farrell. He likes to tease Farrell, the youngest in the crew, to teach him the importance of abiding Reclamations Handbook for safety. He is tolerant and communicative that whenever Farrell acts impulsively or argues with other crew members, he will ease Farrell’s irritation and negotiate the solution among different ideas from the crew members. He is rational and practical that when all crew members theorize the possible situation after being struck, he concludes that they should investigate the land first-handly instead of denying every hypothesis."
] |
24949
|
"Any problem posed by one group of
human beings can be resolved by any
other group." That's what the Handbook
said. But did that include primitive
humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...
CONTROL GROUP
By ROGER DEE
The
cool green disk of Alphard
Six on the screen was
infinitely welcome after the arid
desolation and stinking swamplands
of the inner planets, an
airy jewel of a world that might
have been designed specifically
for the hard-earned month of
rest ahead. Navigator Farrell,
youngest and certainly most impulsive
of the three-man Terran
Reclamations crew, would have
set the Marco Four down at
once but for the greater caution
of Stryker, nominally captain of
the group, and of Gibson, engineer,
and linguist. Xavier, the
ship's little mechanical, had—as
was usual and proper—no voice
in the matter.
"Reconnaissance spiral first,
Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He
chuckled at Farrell's instant
scowl, his little eyes twinkling
and his naked paunch quaking
over the belt of his shipboard
shorts. "Chapter One, Subsection
Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: No planetfall on an unreclaimed
world shall be deemed
safe without proper— "
Farrell, as Stryker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic
impatience. "Do you sleep with that damned Reclamations
Handbook, Lee? Alphard Six
isn't an unreclaimed world—it
was never colonized before the
Hymenop invasion back in 3025,
so why should it be inhabited
now?"
Gibson, who for four hours
had not looked up from his interminable
chess game with
Xavier, paused with a beleaguered
knight in one blunt brown
hand.
"No point in taking chances,"
Gibson said in his neutral baritone.
He shrugged thick bare
shoulders, his humorless black-browed
face unmoved, when
Farrell included him in his
scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six
light-years from Sol, at
the old limits of Terran expansion,
and there's no knowing
what we may turn up here. Alphard's
was one of the first systems
the Bees took over. It must
have been one of the last to be
abandoned when they pulled back
to 70 Ophiuchi."
"And I think you live for the
day," Farrell said acidly, "when
we'll stumble across a functioning
dome of live, buzzing Hymenops.
Damn it, Gib, the Bees
pulled out a hundred years ago,
before you and I were born—neither
of us ever saw a Hymenop,
and never will!"
"But I saw them," Stryker
said. "I fought them for the better
part of the century they were
here, and I learned there's no
predicting nor understanding
them. We never knew why they
came nor why they gave up and
left. How can we know whether
they'd leave a rear-guard or
booby trap here?"
He put a paternal hand on
Farrell's shoulder, understanding
the younger man's eagerness
and knowing that their close-knit
team would have been the
more poorly balanced without it.
"Gib's right," he said. He
nearly added as usual . "We're on
rest leave at the moment, yes,
but our mission is still to find
Terran colonies enslaved and
abandoned by the Bees, not to
risk our necks and a valuable
Reorientations ship by landing
blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in
your shields and find a reconnaissance
spiral, will you?"
Grumbling, Farrell punched
coordinates on the Ringwave
board that lifted the Marco Four out of her descent and restored
the bluish enveloping haze of
her repellors.
Stryker's caution was justified
on the instant. The speeding
streamlined shape that had flashed
up unobserved from below
swerved sharply and exploded in
a cataclysmic blaze of atomic
fire that rocked the ship wildly
and flung the three men to the
floor in a jangling roar of
alarms.
"So the Handbook tacticians
knew what they were about,"
Stryker said minutes later. Deliberately
he adopted the smug
tone best calculated to sting Farrell
out of his first self-reproach,
and grinned when the navigator
bristled defensively. "Some of
their enjoinders seem a little
stuffy and obvious at times, but
they're eminently sensible."
When Farrell refused to be
baited Stryker turned to Gibson,
who was busily assessing the
damage done to the ship's more
fragile equipment, and to Xavier,
who searched the planet's
surface with the ship's magnoscanner.
The Marco Four , Ringwave
generators humming gently,
hung at the moment just
inside the orbit of Alphard Six's
single dun-colored moon.
Gibson put down a test meter
with an air of finality.
"Nothing damaged but the
Zero Interval Transfer computer.
I can realign that in a couple
of hours, but it'll have to be
done before we hit Transfer
again."
Stryker looked dubious.
"What if the issue is forced before
the ZIT unit is repaired?
Suppose they come up after us?"
"I doubt that they can. Any
installation crudely enough
equipped to trust in guided missiles
is hardly likely to have developed
efficient space craft."
Stryker was not reassured.
"That torpedo of theirs was
deadly enough," he said. "And
its nature reflects the nature of
the people who made it. Any race
vicious enough to use atomic
charges is too dangerous to
trifle with." Worry made comical
creases in his fat, good-humored
face. "We'll have to find
out who they are and why
they're here, you know."
"They can't be Hymenops,"
Gibson said promptly. "First,
because the Bees pinned their
faith on Ringwave energy fields,
as we did, rather than on missiles.
Second, because there's no
dome on Six."
"There were three empty
domes on Five, which is a desert
planet," Farrell pointed out.
"Why didn't they settle Six? It's
a more habitable world."
Gibson shrugged. "I know the
Bees always erected domes on
every planet they colonized, Arthur,
but precedent is a fallible
tool. And it's even more firmly
established that there's no possibility
of our rationalizing the
motivations of a culture as alien
as the Hymenops'—we've been
over that argument a hundred
times on other reclaimed
worlds."
"But this was never an unreclaimed
world," Farrell said
with the faint malice of one too
recently caught in the wrong.
"Alphard Six was surveyed and
seeded with Terran bacteria
around the year 3000, but the
Bees invaded before we could
colonize. And that means we'll
have to rule out any resurgent
colonial group down there, because
Six never had a colony in
the beginning."
"The Bees have been gone for
over a hundred years," Stryker
said. "Colonists might have migrated
from another Terran-occupied
planet."
Gibson disagreed.
"We've touched at every inhabited
world in this sector, Lee,
and not one surviving colony has
developed space travel on its
own. The Hymenops had a hundred
years to condition their human
slaves to ignorance of
everything beyond their immediate
environment—the motives
behind that conditioning usually
escape us, but that's beside the
point—and they did a thorough
job of it. The colonists have had
no more than a century of freedom
since the Bees pulled out,
and four generations simply
isn't enough time for any subjugated
culture to climb from
slavery to interstellar flight."
Stryker made a padding turn
about the control room, tugging
unhappily at the scanty fringe
of hair the years had left him.
"If they're neither Hymenops
nor resurgent colonists," he said,
"then there's only one choice remaining—they're
aliens from a
system we haven't reached yet,
beyond the old sphere of Terran
exploration. We always assumed
that we'd find other races out
here someday, and that they'd
be as different from us in form
and motivation as the Hymenops.
Why not now?"
Gibson said seriously, "Not
probable, Lee. The same objection
that rules out the Bees applies
to any trans-Alphardian
culture—they'd have to be beyond
the atomic fission stage,
else they'd never have attempted
interstellar flight. The Ringwave
with its Zero Interval Transfer
principle and instantaneous communications
applications is the
only answer to long-range travel,
and if they'd had that they
wouldn't have bothered with
atomics."
Stryker turned on him almost
angrily. "If they're not Hymenops
or humans or aliens, then
what in God's name are they?"
"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell
said, quoting a passage
whose aptness had somehow seen
it through a dozen reorganizations
of insular tongue and a
final translation to universal
Terran. "If they're none of those
three, we've only one conclusion
left. There's no one down there
at all—we're victims of the first
joint hallucination in psychiatric
history."
Stryker threw up his hands in
surrender. "We can't identify
them by theorizing, and that
brings us down to the business
of first-hand investigation.
Who's going to bell the cat this
time?"
"I'd like to go," Gibson said
at once. "The ZIT computer can
wait."
Stryker vetoed his offer as
promptly. "No, the ZIT comes
first. We may have to run for it,
and we can't set up a Transfer
jump without the computer. It's
got to be me or Arthur."
Farrell felt the familiar chill
of uneasiness that inevitably
preceded this moment of decision.
He was not lacking in courage,
else the circumstances under
which he had worked for the
past ten years—the sometimes
perilous, sometimes downright
charnel conditions left by the
fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would
have broken him long
ago. But that same hard experience
had honed rather than
blunted the edge of his imagination,
and the prospect of a close-quarters
stalking of an unknown
and patently hostile force was
anything but attractive.
"You two did the field work
on the last location," he said.
"It's high time I took my turn—and
God knows I'd go mad if
I had to stay inship and listen
to Lee memorizing his Handbook
subsections or to Gib practicing
dead languages with Xavier."
Stryker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that
had so nearly wrecked the Marco
Four .
"Good enough. Though it
wouldn't be more diverting to
listen for hours to you improvising
enharmonic variations on
the Lament for Old Terra with
your accordion."
Gibson, characteristically, had
a refinement to offer.
"They'll be alerted down there
for a reconnaissance sally," he
said. "Why not let Xavier take
the scouter down for overt diversion,
and drop Arthur off in
the helihopper for a low-level
check?"
Stryker looked at Farrell. "All
right, Arthur?"
"Good enough," Farrell said.
And to Xavier, who had not
moved from his post at the magnoscanner:
"How does it look,
Xav? Have you pinned down
their base yet?"
The mechanical answered him
in a voice as smooth and clear—and
as inflectionless—as a 'cello
note. "The planet seems uninhabited
except for a large island
some three hundred miles in
diameter. There are twenty-seven
small agrarian hamlets surrounded
by cultivated fields.
There is one city of perhaps a
thousand buildings with a central
square. In the square rests
a grounded spaceship of approximately
ten times the bulk
of the Marco Four ."
They crowded about the vision
screen, jostling Xavier's jointed
gray shape in their interest. The
central city lay in minutest detail
before them, the battered
hulk of the grounded ship glinting
rustily in the late afternoon
sunlight. Streets radiated away
from the square in orderly succession,
the whole so clearly
depicted that they could see the
throngs of people surging up
and down, tiny foreshortened
faces turned toward the sky.
"At least they're human,"
Farrell said. Relief replaced in
some measure his earlier uneasiness.
"Which means that they're
Terran, and can be dealt with
according to Reclamations routine.
Is that hulk spaceworthy,
Xav?"
Xavier's mellow drone assumed
the convention vibrato that
indicated stark puzzlement. "Its
breached hull makes the ship incapable
of flight. Apparently it
is used only to supply power to
the outlying hamlets."
The mechanical put a flexible
gray finger upon an indicator
graph derived from a composite
section of detector meters. "The
power transmitted seems to be
gross electric current conveyed
by metallic cables. It is generated
through a crudely governed
process of continuous atomic
fission."
Farrell, himself appalled by
the information, still found himself
able to chuckle at Stryker's
bellow of consternation.
" Continuous fission? Good
God, only madmen would deliberately
run a risk like that!"
Farrell prodded him with
cheerful malice. "Why say mad men ? Maybe they're humanoid
aliens who thrive on hard radiation
and look on the danger of
being blown to hell in the middle
of the night as a satisfactory
risk."
"They're not alien," Gibson
said positively. "Their architecture
is Terran, and so is their
ship. The ship is incredibly
primitive, though; those batteries
of tubes at either end—"
"Are thrust reaction jets,"
Stryker finished in an awed
voice. "Primitive isn't the word,
Gib—the thing is prehistoric!
Rocket propulsion hasn't been
used in spacecraft since—how
long, Xav?"
Xavier supplied the information
with mechanical infallibility.
"Since the year 2100 when
the Ringwave propulsion-communication
principle was discovered.
That principle has served
men since."
Farrell stared in blank disbelief
at the anomalous craft on
the screen. Primitive, as Stryker
had said, was not the word
for it: clumsily ovoid, studded
with torpedo domes and turrets
and bristling at either end with
propulsion tubes, it lay at the
center of its square like a rusted
relic of a past largely destroyed
and all but forgotten. What a
magnificent disregard its builders
must have had, he thought,
for their lives and the genetic
purity of their posterity! The
sullen atomic fires banked in
that oxidizing hulk—
Stryker said plaintively, "If
you're right, Gib, then we're
more in the dark than ever. How
could a Terran-built ship eleven
hundred years old get here ?"
Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's
contemplation of alternatives,
seemed hardly to hear
him.
"Logic or not-logic," Gibson
said. "If it's a Terran artifact,
we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not—"
" Any problem posed by one
group of human beings ," Stryker
quoted his Handbook, " can be
resolved by any other group, regardless
of ideology or conditioning,
because the basic
perceptive abilities of both must
be the same through identical
heredity ."
"If it's an imitation, and this
is another Hymenop experiment
in condition ecology, then we're
stumped to begin with," Gibson
finished. "Because we're not
equipped to evaluate the psychology
of alien motivation. We've
got to determine first which case
applies here."
He waited for Farrell's expected
irony, and when the
navigator forestalled him by remaining
grimly quiet, continued.
"The obvious premise is that
a Terran ship must have been
built by Terrans. Question: Was
it flown here, or built here?"
"It couldn't have been built
here," Stryker said. "Alphard
Six was surveyed just before the
Bees took over in 3025, and there
was nothing of the sort here
then. It couldn't have been built
during the two and a quarter
centuries since; it's obviously
much older than that. It was
flown here."
"We progress," Farrell said
dryly. "Now if you'll tell us how ,
we're ready to move."
"I think the ship was built on
Terra during the Twenty-second
Century," Gibson said calmly.
"The atomic wars during that
period destroyed practically all
historical records along with the
technology of the time, but I've
read well-authenticated reports
of atomic-driven ships leaving
Terra before then for the nearer
stars. The human race climbed
out of its pit again during the
Twenty-third Century and developed
the technology that gave
us the Ringwave. Certainly no
atomic-powered ships were built
after the wars—our records are
complete from that time."
Farrell shook his head at the
inference. "I've read any number
of fanciful romances on the
theme, Gib, but it won't stand
up in practice. No shipboard society
could last through a thousand-year
space voyage. It's a
physical and psychological impossibility.
There's got to be
some other explanation."
Gibson shrugged. "We can
only eliminate the least likely
alternatives and accept the simplest
one remaining."
"Then we can eliminate this
one now," Farrell said flatly. "It
entails a thousand-year voyage,
which is an impossibility for any
gross reaction drive; the application
of suspended animation
or longevity or a successive-generation
program, and a final
penetration of Hymenop-occupied
space to set up a colony under
the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed
until around the year 3000—Lee
here was one of the first to
profit by it, if you remember—and
suspended animation is still
to come. So there's one theory
you can forget."
"Arthur's right," Stryker said
reluctantly. "An atomic-powered
ship couldn't have made such a
trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have
lasted through forty generations,
speculative fiction to the
contrary—the later generations
would have been too far removed
in ideology and intent from
their ancestors. They'd have
adapted to shipboard life as the
norm. They'd have atrophied
physically, perhaps even have
mutated—"
"And they'd never have
fought past the Bees during the
Hymenop invasion and occupation,"
Farrell finished triumphantly.
"The Bees had better
detection equipment than we
had. They'd have picked this
ship up long before it reached
Alphard Six."
"But the ship wasn't here in
3000," Gibson said, "and it is
now. Therefore it must have arrived
at some time during the
two hundred years of Hymenop
occupation and evacuation."
Farrell, tangled in contradictions,
swore bitterly. "But
why should the Bees let them
through? The three domes on
Five are over two hundred years
old, which means that the Bees
were here before the ship came.
Why didn't they blast it or enslave
its crew?"
"We haven't touched on all the
possibilities," Gibson reminded
him. "We haven't even established
yet that these people were
never under Hymenop control.
Precedent won't hold always, and
there's no predicting nor evaluating
the motives of an alien
race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no
common ground of logic between
us. Why try to interpret their
intentions now?"
Farrell threw up his hands in
disgust. "Next you'll say this is
an ancient Terran expedition
that actually succeeded! There's
only one way to answer the
questions we've raised, and
that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"
But uncertainty nagged uneasily
at him when Farrell found
himself alone in the helihopper
with the forest flowing beneath
like a leafy river and Xavier's
scouter disappearing bulletlike
into the dusk ahead.
We never found a colony so
advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose
this is a Hymenop experiment
that really paid off? The
Bees did some weird and wonderful
things with human
guinea pigs—what if they've
created the ultimate booby trap
here, and primed it with conditioned
myrmidons in our own
form?
Suppose, he thought—and derided
himself for thinking it—one
of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed?
Xavier's voice, a mellow
drone from the helihopper's
Ringwave-powered visicom, cut
sharply into his musing. "The
ship has discovered the scouter
and is training an electronic
beam upon it. My instruments
record an electromagnetic vibration
pattern of low power but
rapidly varying frequency. The
operation seems pointless."
Stryker's voice followed, querulous
with worry: "I'd better
pull Xav back. It may be something
lethal."
"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised.
Surprisingly, there was
excitement in the engineer's
voice. "I think they're trying to
communicate with us."
Farrell was on the point of
demanding acidly to know how
one went about communicating
by means of a fluctuating electric
field when the unexpected
cessation of forest diverted his
attention. The helihopper scudded
over a cultivated area
of considerable extent, fields
stretching below in a vague random
checkerboard of lighter and
darker earth, an undefined cluster
of buildings at their center.
There was a central bonfire that
burned like a wild red eye
against the lower gloom, and in
its plunging ruddy glow he made
out an urgent scurrying of shadowy
figures.
"I'm passing over a hamlet,"
Farrell reported. "The one nearest
the city, I think. There's
something odd going on
down—"
Catastrophe struck so suddenly
that he was caught completely
unprepared. The helihopper's
flimsy carriage bucked and
crumpled. There was a blinding
flare of electric discharge, a
pungent stink of ozone and a
stunning shock that flung him
headlong into darkness.
He awoke slowly with a brutal
headache and a conviction of
nightmare heightened by the
outlandish tone of his surroundings.
He lay on a narrow bed in
a whitely antiseptic infirmary,
an oblong metal cell cluttered
with a grimly utilitarian array
of tables and lockers and chests.
The lighting was harsh and
overbright and the air hung
thick with pungent unfamiliar
chemical odors. From somewhere,
far off yet at the same
time as near as the bulkhead
above him, came the unceasing
drone of machinery.
Farrell sat up, groaning,
when full consciousness made his
position clear. He had been shot
down by God knew what sort of
devastating unorthodox weapon
and was a prisoner in the
grounded ship.
At his rising, a white-smocked
fat man with anachronistic spectacles
and close-cropped gray
hair came into the room, moving
with the professional assurance
of a medic. The man stopped
short at Farrell's stare and
spoke; his words were utterly
unintelligible, but his gesture
was unmistakable.
Farrell followed him dumbly
out of the infirmary and down
a bare corridor whose metal
floor rang coldly underfoot. An
open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall
and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian
sunlight; Farrell slowed
to look out, wondering how
long he had lain unconscious,
and felt panic knife at him
when he saw Xavier's scouter lying,
port open and undefended,
on the square outside.
The mechanical had been as
easily taken as himself, then.
Stryker and Gibson, for all their
professional caution, would fare
no better—they could not have
overlooked the capture of Farrell
and Xavier, and when they
tried as a matter of course to
rescue them the Marco would be
struck down in turn by the same
weapon.
The fat medic turned and
said something urgent in his
unintelligible tongue. Farrell,
dazed by the enormity of what
had happened, followed without
protest into an intersecting way
that led through a bewildering
succession of storage rooms and
hydroponics gardens, through a
small gymnasium fitted with
physical training equipment in
graduated sizes and finally into
a soundproofed place that could
have been nothing but a nursery.
The implication behind its
presence stopped Farrell short.
"A creche ," he said, stunned.
He had a wild vision of endless
generations of children growing
up in this dim and stuffy room,
to be taught from their first
toddling steps the functions they
must fulfill before the venture
of which they were a part could
be consummated.
One of those old ventures had succeeded, he thought, and was
awed by the daring of that thousand-year
odyssey. The realization
left him more alarmed than
before—for what technical marvels
might not an isolated group
of such dogged specialists have
developed during a millennium
of application?
Such a weapon as had brought
down the helihopper and scouter
was patently beyond reach of his
own latter-day technology. Perhaps,
he thought, its possession
explained the presence of these
people here in the first stronghold
of the Hymenops; perhaps
they had even fought and defeated
the Bees on their own invaded
ground.
He followed his white-smocked
guide through a power room
where great crude generators
whirred ponderously, pouring
out gross electric current into
arm-thick cables. They were
nearing the bow of the ship
when they passed by another
open port and Farrell, glancing
out over the lowered rampway,
saw that his fears for Stryker
and Gibson had been well
grounded.
The Marco Four , ports open,
lay grounded outside.
Farrell could not have said,
later, whether his next move
was planned or reflexive. The
whole desperate issue seemed to
hang suspended for a breathless
moment upon a hair-fine edge of
decision, and in that instant he
made his bid.
Without pausing in his stride
he sprang out and through the
port and down the steep plane
of the ramp. The rough stone
pavement of the square drummed
underfoot; sore muscles
tore at him, and weakness was
like a weight about his neck. He
expected momentarily to be
blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his
guide ringing unintelligibly in
his ears. The port yawned; he
plunged inside and stabbed at
controls without waiting to seat
himself. The ports swung shut.
The ship darted up under his
manipulation and arrowed into
space with an acceleration that
sprung his knees and made his
vision swim blackly.
He was so weak with strain
and with the success of his coup
that he all but fainted when
Stryker, his scanty hair tousled
and his fat face comical with bewilderment,
stumbled out of his
sleeping cubicle and bellowed at
him.
"What the hell are you doing,
Arthur? Take us down!"
Farrell gaped at him, speechless.
Stryker lumbered past him
and took the controls, spiraling
the Marco Four down. Men
swarmed outside the ports when
the Reclamations craft settled
gently to the square again. Gibson
and Xavier reached the ship
first; Gibson came inside quickly,
leaving the mechanical outside
making patient explanations
to an excited group of Alphardians.
Gibson put a reassuring hand
on Farrell's arm. "It's all right,
Arthur. There's no trouble."
Farrell said dumbly, "I don't
understand. They didn't shoot
you and Xav down too?"
It was Gibson's turn to stare.
"No one shot you down! These
people are primitive enough to
use metallic power lines to
carry electricity to their hamlets,
an anachronism you forgot
last night. You piloted the helihopper
into one of those lines,
and the crash put you out for
the rest of the night and most
of today. These Alphardians are
friendly, so desperately happy to
be found again that it's really
pathetic."
" Friendly? That torpedo—"
"It wasn't a torpedo at all,"
Stryker put in. Understanding
of the error under which Farrell
had labored erased his
earlier irritation, and he chuckled
commiseratingly. "They had
one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to
contact us in the fear that we
might overlook their settlement
and move on. The boat was
atomic powered, and our shield
screens set off its engines."
Farrell dropped into a chair at
the chart table, limp with reaction.
He was suddenly exhausted,
and his head ached dully.
"We cracked the communications
problem early last night,"
Gibson said. "These people use
an ancient system of electromagnetic
wave propagation called
frequency modulation, and once
Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple.
Both Xav and I recognized the
old language; the natives reported
your accident, and we came
down at once."
"They really came from Terra?
They lived through a thousand
years of flight?"
"The ship left Terra for
Sirius in 2171," Gibson said.
"But not with these people
aboard, or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less
than a light-year when its
hydroponics system failed. The
Hymenops found the ship derelict
when they invaded us, and
brought it to Alphard Six in
what was probably their first experiment
with human subjects.
The ship's log shows clearly
what happened to the original
complement. The rest is deducible
from the situation here."
Farrell put his hands to his
temples and groaned. "The crash
must have scrambled my wits.
Gib, where did they come from?"
"From one of the first peripheral
colonies conquered by the
Bees," Gibson said patiently.
"The Hymenops were long-range
planners, remember, and masters
of hypnotic conditioning. They
stocked the ship with a captive
crew of Terrans conditioned to
believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and
grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard
Five then, to watch developments.
"Succeeding generations of
colonists grew up accepting the
fact that their ship had missed
Sirius and made planetfall here—they
still don't know where
they really are—by luck. They
never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along
with an inadequate technology in
the hope that a later expedition
would find them. They found the
truth hard to take, but they're
eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran
assimilation."
Stryker, grinning, brought
Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled
invitingly. "An unusually
fortunate ending to a Hymenop
experiment," he said. "These
people progressed normally because
they've been let alone. Reorienting
them will be a simple
matter; they'll be properly spoiled
colonists within another generation."
Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.
"But I don't see why the Bees
should go to such trouble to deceive
these people. Why did they
sit back and let them grow as
they pleased, Gib? It doesn't
make sense!"
"But it does, for once," Gibson
said. "The Bees set up this
colony as a control unit to study
the species they were invading,
and they had to give their
specimens a normal—if obsolete—background
in order to determine
their capabilities. The fact
that their experiment didn't tell
them what they wanted to know
may have had a direct bearing
on their decision to pull out."
Farrell shook his head. "It's
a reverse application, isn't it of
the old saw about Terrans being
incapable of understanding an
alien culture?"
"Of course," said Gibson, surprised.
"It's obvious enough,
surely—hard as they tried, the
Bees never understood us
either."
THE END
|
What is the relationship between Jon Karyl and his Steel-Blue (the one that he initially meets)?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Acid Bath by Bill Garson.
Relevant chunks:
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
Question:
What is the relationship between Jon Karyl and his Steel-Blue (the one that he initially meets)?
Answer:
|
[
"Jon is initially curious about the Steel-Blue that he first meets in the space station. When he notices that it has eyes on the back of its head, it even says “Thank you” to him. It also tells him that its species can read his mind. The Steel-Blue also explains to him that the metal they use at the station is considered to be the softest one from where the Space Blue’s come from. It is not openly hostile towards him, but it does speak almost contemptuously when they go to the examination room. Although his Steel Blue initially did not show much hostility, it does warn him to not even think about contacting the SP ship or using his weapon. However, it does tease him and say that he gets absent-minded at times. When it tells him about the torture, his Blue Steel speaks in an almost-caressing way as well. When Jon breaks out of his tank to find food, his Steel-Blue tells him that it is the first of the creatures that he has met. It commands him to go back to the tank. Although it seems friendly at first, Jon and the Steel-Blue do not have any sort of positive relationship. The Steel-Blue wishes to see him suffer, while Jon wants to survive and get out of the torture room. ",
"The relationship between Karyl and his Steel-Blue is a tentative friendship, I would say. Both parties are curious about each other and seem more interested in learning about each other, rather than being vindictive like the No.1 Steel-Blue seems to be. For example, his Steel-Blue thanks Karyl when the latter comments on his innovative eyes on the back on his head. \n\nKaryl converses and interacts with his Steel-Blue the most, both in regards to the incoming SP ship as well as Karyl's apparent absent-mindedness. ",
"Jon Karyl, a starways’ Lone Watcher, is in a controlled relationship with the Steel-Blue, an extra-terrestrial robotic creature that he first meets. He is stricken down by the Steel-Blue and taken by it to its spaceship. Jon is the captive and the watched prisoner of the Steel-Blue. When Jon tries to escape from his prison or the torture because of the unbearable hunger, the Steel-Blue forces him to go back and stay in the newly-built smaller igloo. Jon breaks one tentacle of the Steel-Blue by using his stubray pistol when he tries to resist it. The Steel-Blue suppresses Jon by showing the power of its weapon and forces him back to the prison. The relationship between them is superior and inferior, in the sense of being captive. ",
"The relationship between Jon and the first steel-blue is that of capturer-victim. The steel-blue manages to break into Jon’s base and captures Jon. After this, Jon uses the steel-blue to understand what the robots are and how they work. They communicate with each other, and Jon doesn’t seem to be afraid of the steel-blue. Jon was very curious about the species, so he didn’t want the robot in order to learn more about them. When Jon escapes from the torture, the same steel-blue captures him again and takes him back. "
] |
29159
|
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
|
What are the physical features of the Steel-Blue creatures?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Acid Bath by Bill Garson.
Relevant chunks:
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
Question:
What are the physical features of the Steel-Blue creatures?
Answer:
|
[
"The Steel-Blue creatures are described to be steel-blue in color. They have egg-shaped heads and walking appendages. The Steel-Blues are also around the height of Jon at six feet, and their appendages are many-jointed. These appendages also stretch and shrink independent of each other, but the cylindrical body and tentacles are kept on a level balance. Instead of eyes, the Steel-Blues have elliptical-shaped lenses that cover half of the head and converge around the sides of the head. Jon notes that they are robots without masters. When Jon follows the Steel-Blue later, he notes that it has a lens on the back of its head as well. The massive steel-blue creature that Jon meets has four more tentacles, including two short ones that grow out of its head. ",
"These creatures - robots - are steel-blue in nature with egg shaped heads. They stand at about six feet tall and have a rectangular-like stature with flexible appendages (able to move independently of each other), a cylindrical body, and ellipitcal-shaped lens for eyes that are present both on the front and back of their head. \n\nSome of the creatures, unlike Jon's Steel-Blue, also have more tentacles that also grew atop their heads. These tentacles were able to move like limbs, for example, it was able to grab the glass containing the yellowish liquid. ",
"Steel-Blue is around six feet high. Their head shape looks like an egg, colored Steel-Blue. Each has four pairs of independently jointed forked tentacles, stretching from their cylindrical body, which let them move. Their body shape is straight without the curve of the shoulder or hip. Elliptical-shaped lenses cover their heads for both the front and the back of their heads, whose ends wind around the side. They look like robots. They communicate with telepathy. The leader of the Steel-Blue, No. 1, is more massive than the normal ones and has four more pairs of tentacles, two of which are shorter and stretch out from its head.",
"The creatures are described as being of a steel-blue color. They are six feet tall, and they have egg shaped heads. They don’t have any legs or hands, instead they have appendages that allow them to move. They are cylindrical, and have 4 tentacles that allow them to fight and grab things. Instead of eyes they have elliptical shaped lenses that allow them to see, and they also have lenses on the back of their head, which allows them to see. They also communicate with Jon via telepathy, and they can read his mind. "
] |
29159
|
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Acid Bath by Bill Garson.
Relevant chunks:
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Jon Karyl is bolting a new baffle plate on the stationary rocket engine and ignores what happens around other parts of the little asteroid. A peculiar spaceship lands a few hundred yards away from his plastic igloo, and a half-dozen steel-blue creatures slide out of the airlock. When he climbs up again and sees the creatures, Jon runs for the rocky slopes. Jon brings out his stubray pistol and turns up the oxygen dial for greater exertion as two of the creatures continue to chase him. He manages to elude them by going down a dim trail temporarily. Once Jon finds the stubby bush shaped like a Maltese cross, he keeps going until he reaches the hollowed-out space. He observes the steel-blue creatures from the televisor, noting how they head towards the station to try and destroy it. Although the station is not supposed to break because it is made out of stelrylite, the creatures pound holes into the station with round-headed metal clubs. He presses the atomic cannon’s firing buttons and finds that it is impossible to damage the ship. Suddenly, a Steel-Blue paralyzes him from the waist down and tells him to come with them. Once outside, the Steel-Blue explains to Jon that the most protective metal they use is the softest one in their world. He follows the Steel-Blue into the ship, where a more massive one tells Jon’s Steel-Blue to examine him and give him death. The Steel-Blue brings him to the examination room, where Jon is curious about this whole interaction. He thinks about warning the SP patrol and using his weapon, but his Steel-Blue tells him they are already aware of it. The other Steel-Blues begin reproducing the service station, and Jon’s Steel-Blue tells him that his torture will be dissolved in a liquid they have prepared. When he goes inside, he prepares to blast at the cylinder with his gun. However, the tentacles take it away from him and bring him a glass-like cup filled with liquid. Jon toasts to Earth and drinks the liquid, going to sleep shortly after. When he awakes again, the Steel-Blues are amazed that he is still alive. On the fifth day, Jon breaks out of his plastic bowl with his subray because he is hungry. The Steel-Blues try to torture him more with the poison, and Jon has now made it a fetish to stay alive. When Jon takes the drink from No. 1, it tells him that the SP ship will be destroyed. Jon tries to send a distress signal, and he watches as the SP ship begins to come abruptly. The Steel-Blues watch as he tries to escape, only to be greeted by the voice of a space guard. Captain Ron Small of SP-101 tells him later that the Steel-Blues fed him a liquid they feared. The Steel-Blues tried to fight back, but the SP ship just shot a water rocket and set it on atomic fire. Captain Small and Jon then toast to water. ",
"This story follows Jon Karyl, a service station attendant. While fixing something on the rocket engine, a landing peculiar blue ship escapes his attention. When he notices the intruders, he finds them to be steel-blue creatures intent on approaching and capturing him. Escaping away back to the service station, he fires atomic cannons at the creatures' ship only to watch it ricochet off. Suddenly, a Steel-Blue temporarily paralyzes his legs and instructs him to follow. Karyl finds out - through an exchange of mind-reading - that these Steel-Blues are just like Earthmen as they seek out further planets to inhabit. \n\nAnother Steel-Blue instructs Karyl's Steel-Blue to examine him and then torture him, leaving him to his death. Proclaimed to be a soft-metal creature, Karyl is instructed to enter a plastic igloo. This igloo is a reproduction of Earth's atmosphere, so the Steel-Blues can observe the torture. In it, Karyl is given a series of dilutions containing a liquid that dissolves metal, with the last tumbler containing the pure liquid. Though Karyl initially tries to escape using his stubray pistol, he becomes curious about death and drinks the liquid. To the Steel-Blues surprise, he survives the first night and all subsequent days as well, seemingly only suffering from a lack of food and nutrition. Karyl vows to stay alive until the SP ship can rescue him, but his Steel-Blue warns him that they will be ready to attack it when it comes. \n\nOn the sixteenth day, the Steel-Blues await Karyl to die as they give him the final undiluted liquid. Drinking it, Karyl laughs instead and taunts the Steel-Blues. Using a power-pack radio, he sends a warning signal to the SP ship. When it arrives, he stumbles out of the igloo and crawls until he hears a human voice. Later on in his recovery, he finds out that his warning was successful and that the liquid thought to be poison by the Steel-Blues was in fact water. Beneficial to humans, but harmful to robots. In fact, this is what the Captain of the SP ship used to attack the Steel-Blues. ",
"After he repairs the rocket engine, Jon Karyl, a starways’ Lone Watcher, notices the invasion of Steel-Blues, extraterrestrial robotic creatures. He flees towards the service station while six Steel-Blues chase behind him. During his run, Steel-Blues use power rays to attack him but fail. He flees successfully into the service station, uses the televisors to spot the motion of Steel-Blues, and examines them. He realizes Steel-Blues are robotic. The pounding sound upstairs makes Jon realizes that Steel-Blues is trying to break the entrance door. He thinks Steel-Blues are doing a useless job as the strongest metal forms the service station in the solar system. He goes to the station’s power plant to use the televisor that can see every room, but the Steel-Blue pounds a hole into the door, which seems impossible to him. He attacks the Steel-Blues’ spaceship with an atomic cannon bomb, finding the bomb ricochet off the ship and strike the rocket nearby. Suddenly, he is taken down by the Steel-Blue, who invades the station when he tries to attack the ship the second time. Through the conversation with the invading Steel-Blue, Jon knows that they can read his mind when it is directed outward.\n\nAs Jon is taken to the Steel-Blues’ ship, he learns that the toughest metal in the solar system is considered the most vulnerable one for Steel-Blues. He also knows that Steel-Blues’ purpose in invading the solar system is to conquer more living spaces for themselves. In the Steel-Blues’ ship, Jon sees the leader of the Steel-Blue, who orders Jon’s guide Steel-Blue to examine Jon. After Jon is examined, they classify him as a soft-metal creature by him. Jon is taken to a prison to undergo the torture built by the Steel-Blue, forced to drink a liquid used to dissolve the metal. The Earth space patrol cruiser will come to refuel their ship after 21 days; Jon knows that he has to stay alive until then to alert the SP ship. During the torture, namely drinking the unknown liquid, Jon attempts to escape but fails. The Steel-Blues every day watch him undergo torture. At the beginning of the torture, the liquid is diluted and tastes like some strong acid. As the days pass, the diluted portion decreases, and Jon realizes what the liquid is. Finally, on the last day, when the SP ship is scheduled to come, and Jon is fed with the undiluted liquid, he realizes that it is water and the weakness of the Steel-Blues. He sends the message to the SP ship and then passes out outside the prison. When he wakes up, he is rescued by the SP ship, and the Steel-Blues is destroyed by the powerful water attack of the SP ship.\n",
"The story follows Jon Karyl, a lone watcher that lives in what seems to be an asteroid. He is in charge of watching and protecting the asteroid before other humans come. While doing this, an alien ship arrives on the asteroid. Jon is forced to run from his base while the aliens chase him. He manages to get to his secondary entry to the base without the aliens seeing. When he gets back to the base, he tries to shoot the enemy ship with a cannon, but he doesn’t do any damage. Instead, the aliens manage to break into his base and capture him. Jon is taken to the enemy ship and he realizes that the aliens are in fact robots. The robots take him to their leader, where Jon is told that he will be tortured. Jon knows that there is another ship coming in 21 days, so he only has to survive for those days. The robots give Jon an acid that would slowly kill him, and Jon is forced to drink it. After a few days of this same routine, Jon escapes the ship using his blaster, as he is very hungry. He gets caught again and continues drinking the acid. When the human ship arrives, Jon manages to warn them about the robots. When Jon woke up from passing out, the humans had already destroyed the robots. It is revealed that they had been feeding Jon water and citric acid, thinking that it would kill Jon. "
] |
29159
|
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
|
Describe the setting of the story.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Acid Bath by Bill Garson.
Relevant chunks:
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story is initially set on an asteroid, where a stationary rocket station is. Jon has a blue plastic igloo to live in. There is also a ravine where he runs to in an attempt to elude the Steel-Blues. There are bushes, water, and dense thicket that he must go through before getting to the hollowed-out space in the center. At the station, there is a lock for his key to go through. The lever then opens to a long tunnel, and there is a televisor that fixes on the area. The station is made out of stelrylite, but it becomes riddled with holes after the Steel-Blues attack. The station also has a row of studs and a revolving turret that fires atomic cannons. There is a yellow, blue, and red button to fire. The Blue Steels’ spaceship can change its part to a bubble-like metal. The spaceship of the invaders is pitch-black and is a maze-like corridor. At the end, there is a circular room with bright light streaming from a glass-like and bulging skylight. In the examination room, the Steel-Blues build a miniature reproduction of the space station with plastic walls. There is a small opening in the four foot cylinder that brings him a strange liquid. Although the Steel-Blues are always present, the tank they keep him in is fairly easy to break out of. ",
"This setting occurs in the same system as Earth, inhabited both by humans and the Steel-Blue creatures. More specifically, this story takes place aboard the Steel-Blues' ship. Karyl encounters many rooms including the examination room, but the majority of the story has him in a clear plastic igloo by which is he observed by the creatures. The igloo is a miniature recreation of the service station with a lock outside. \n\nAt the end of the story, Karyl is saved and the setting changes to be onboard the Space Patrol ship, where he is safe and recovering.",
"The story happens on an asteroid under the control of the earthman. The surface of the asteroid is rocky and uneven. The service station is underground of a ravine, whose surface is filled with man-high bushes. Its entrance is hidden underneath a dense thicket around the hairpin turn of the old watercourse. In the center of the hollowed-out space lies a self-sealing lock, which is the door of the entrance. Behind the door, there is a long tunnel, the end of which is a room surrounded by the televisors. A steel ladder leads to the station’s power plant room, which is also equipped with televisors that can watch all the rooms in the station. There are weapons stored in the power room. The station is capped with a revolving turret. The outer shell of the service station, including the entrance door, is constituted by stelrylite, the toughest metal in Earthman’s knowledge. The blue spaceship lies near the stationary rocket engine outside the service station. Inside the blue spaceship, it is dark and mazed with corridors. There is a circular room lighted with a bulging skylight, where the leader of the Steel-Blues is. \n\nThe Steel-Blues build a smaller plastic igloo, similar to the one in the service station, to serve as the prison for Jon to torture him. There are instruments ranged inside, such as an air pump from the station and a pallet laid inside. The wall is made of clear plastic. The atmosphere inside is reproduced as the one in the service station, only with more proportion of the oxygen. There is a cylinder whose center can open, where it usually sits a glass tumbler containing a yellowish liquid that is claimed to be the harmful liquid to torture Jon. The cylinder is equipped with tentacles that can control Jon to drink the liquid and take down his defense.\n",
"The story is located in a small asteroid that is described to be barren and empty, with gray rocks. The asteroid only has a single base, which is where Jon lives alone. There is also a ravine with plants that allow Jon to hide a secondary entry to his base, which is the one that he uses to get away from the steel-blues initially. When Jon gets captured, he is taken to the ship of the steel-blues, and he learns that they made a smaller replica of his base because they want him to die happily. "
] |
29159
|
ACID BATH
By VASELEOS GARSON
The starways' Lone Watcher had expected some odd developments
in his singular, nerve-fraught job on the asteroid. But nothing like the
weird twenty-one-day liquid test devised by the invading Steel-Blues.
Jon Karyl
was bolting in a new baffle
plate on the stationary rocket engine.
It was a tedious job and took all his
concentration. So he wasn't paying too much
attention to what was going on in other
parts of the little asteroid.
He didn't see the peculiar blue space
ship, its rockets throttled down, as it drifted
to land only a few hundred yards away from
his plastic igloo.
Nor did he see the half-dozen steel-blue
creatures slide out of the peculiar vessel's
airlock.
It was only as he crawled out of the
depths of the rocket power plant that he
realized something was wrong.
By then it was almost too late. The six
blue figures were only fifty feet away, approaching
him at a lope.
Jon Karyl took one look and went bounding
over the asteroid's rocky slopes in fifty-foot
bounds.
When you're a Lone Watcher, and
strangers catch you unawares, you don't
stand still. You move fast. It's the Watcher's
first rule. Stay alive. An Earthship may depend
upon your life.
As he fled, Jon Karyl cursed softly under
his breath. The automatic alarm should have
shrilled out a warning.
Then he saved as much of his breath as
he could as some sort of power wave tore
up the rocky sward to his left. He twisted
and zig-zagged in his flight, trying to get
out of sight of the strangers.
Once hidden from their eyes, he could cut
back and head for the underground entrance
to the service station.
He glanced back finally.
Two of the steel-blue creatures were jack-rabbiting
after him, and rapidly closing the
distance.
Jon Karyl unsheathed the stubray pistol
at his side, turned the oxygen dial up for
greater exertion, increased the gravity pull
in his space-suit boots as he neared the
ravine he'd been racing for.
The oxygen was just taking hold when
he hit the lip of the ravine and began
sprinting through its man-high bush-strewn
course.
The power ray from behind ripped out
great gobs of the sheltering bushes. But
running naturally, bent close to the bottom
of the ravine, Jon Karyl dodged the bare
spots. The oxygen made the tremendous
exertion easy for his lungs as he sped down
the dim trail, hidden from the two steel-blue
stalkers.
He'd eluded them, temporarily at least,
Jon Karyl decided when he finally edged off
the dim trail and watched for movement
along the route behind him.
He stood up, finally, pushed aside the
leafy overhang of a bush and looked for
landmarks along the edge of the ravine.
He found one, a stubby bush, shaped like
a Maltese cross, clinging to the lip of the
ravine. The hidden entrance to the service
station wasn't far off.
His pistol held ready, he moved quietly
on down the ravine until the old water
course made an abrupt hairpin turn.
Instead of following around the sharp
bend, Jon Karyl moved straight ahead
through the overhanging bushes until he
came to a dense thicket. Dropping to his
hands and knees he worked his way under
the edge of the thicket into a hollowed-out
space in the center.
There
, just ahead of him, was the lock
leading into the service station. Slipping
a key out of a leg pouch on the space suit,
he jabbed it into the center of the lock,
opening the lever housing.
He pulled strongly on the lever. With a
hiss of escaping air, the lock swung open.
Jon Karyl darted inside, the door closing
softly behind.
At the end of the long tunnel he stepped
to the televisor which was fixed on the area
surrounding the station.
Jon Karyl saw none of the steel-blue creatures.
But he saw their ship. It squatted
like a smashed-down kid's top, its lock shut
tight.
He tuned the televisor to its widest range
and finally spotted one of the Steel-Blues.
He was looking into the stationary rocket
engine.
As Karyl watched, a second Steel-Blue
came crawling out of the ship.
The two Steel-Blues moved toward the
center of the televisor range. They're coming
toward the station, Karyl thought grimly.
Karyl examined the two creatures. They
were of the steel-blue color from the crown
of their egg-shaped heads to the tips of
their walking appendages.
They were about the height of Karyl—six
feet. But where he tapered from broad
shoulders to flat hips, they were straight up
and down. They had no legs, just appendages,
many-jointed that stretched and
shrank independent of the other, but keeping
the cylindrical body with its four pairs
of tentacles on a level balance.
Where their eyes would have been was
an elliptical-shaped lens, covering half the
egg-head, with its converging ends curving
around the sides of the head.
Robots! Jon gauged immediately. But
where were their masters?
The Steel-Blues moved out of the range
of the televisor. A minute later Jon heard
a pounding from the station upstairs.
He chuckled. They were like the wolf of
pre-atomic days who huffed and puffed to
blow the house down.
The outer shell of the station was formed
from stelrylite, the toughest metal in the
solar system. With the self-sealing lock of
the same resistant material, a mere pounding
was nothing.
Jon thought he'd have a look-see anyway.
He went up the steel ladder leading to the
station's power plant and the televisor that
could look into every room within the
station.
He heaved a slight sigh when he reached
the power room, for right at his hand were
weapons to blast the ship from the asteroid.
Jon adjusted one televisor to take in the
lock to the station. His teeth suddenly
clamped down on his lower lip.
Those Steel-Blues were pounding holes
into the stelrylite with round-headed metal
clubs. But it was impossible. Stelrylite didn't
break up that easily.
Jon leaped to a row of studs, lining up
the revolving turret which capped the station
so that its thin fin pointed at the
squat ship of the invaders.
Then he went to the atomic cannon's
firing buttons.
He pressed first the yellow, then the blue
button. Finally the red one.
The thin fin—the cannon's sight—split in
half as the turret opened and the coiled nose
of the cannon protruded. There was a
soundless flash. Then a sharp crack.
Jon was dumbfounded when he saw the
bolt ricochet off the ship. This was no ship
of the solar system. There was nothing that
could withstand even the slight jolt of power
given by the station cannon on any of the
Sun's worlds. But what was this? A piece of
the ship had changed. A bubble of metal,
like a huge drop of blue wax, dripped off
the vessel and struck the rocket of the
asteroid. It steamed and ran in rivulets.
He pressed the red button again.
Then abruptly he was on the floor of the
power room, his legs strangely cut out from
under him. He tried to move them. They lay
flaccid. His arms seemed all right and tried
to lever himself to an upright position.
Damn it, he seemed as if he were paralyzed
from the waist down. But it couldn't
happen that suddenly.
He turned his head.
A Steel-Blue stood facing him. A forked
tentacle held a square black box.
Jon could read nothing in that metallic
face. He said, voice muffled by the confines
of the plastic helmet, "Who are you?"
"I am"—there was a rising inflection in
the answer—"a Steel-Blue."
There were no lips on the Steel-Blue's
face to move. "That is what I have named
you," Jon Karyl said. "But what are you?"
"A robot," came the immediate answer.
Jon was quite sure then that the Steel-Blue
was telepathic. "Yes," the Steel-Blue answered.
"We talk in the language of the
mind. Come!" he said peremptorily, motioning
with the square black box.
The paralysis left Karyl's legs. He followed
the Steel-Blue, aware that the lens
he'd seen on the creature's face had a
counterpart on the back of the egg-head.
Eyes in the back of his head, Jon thought.
That's quite an innovation. "Thank you,"
Steel-Blue said.
There wasn't much fear in Jon Karyl's
mind. Psychiatrists had proved that when he
had applied for this high-paying but man-killing
job as a Lone Watcher on the Solar
System's starways.
He had little fear now, only curiosity.
These Steel-Blues didn't seem inimical.
They could have snuffed out my life very
simply. Perhaps they and Solarians can be
friends.
Steel-Blue chuckled.
Jon
followed him through the sundered
lock of the station. Karyl stopped for a
moment to examine the wreckage of the
lock. It had been punched full of holes as
if it had been some soft cheese instead of a
metal which Earthmen had spent nearly a
century perfecting.
"We appreciate your compliment," Steel-Blue
said. "But that metal also is found on
our world. It's probably the softest and most
malleable we have. We were surprised you—earthmen,
is it?—use it as protective
metal."
"Why are you in this system?" Jon asked,
hardly expecting an answer.
It came anyway. "For the same reason you
Earthmen are reaching out farther into your
system. We need living room. You have
strategically placed planets for our use. We
will use them."
Jon sighed. For 400 years scientists had
been preaching preparedness as Earth flung
her ships into the reaches of the solar system,
taking the first long step toward the
conquest of space.
There are other races somewhere, they
argued. As strong and smart as man, many
of them so transcending man in mental and
inventive power that we must be prepared to
strike the minute danger shows.
Now here was the answer to the scientists'
warning. Invasion by extra-terrestrials.
"What did you say?" asked Steel-Blue.
"I couldn't understand."
"Just thinking to myself," Jon answered.
It was a welcome surprise. Apparently his
thoughts had to be directed outward, rather
than inward, in order for the Steel-Blues to
read it.
He followed the Steel-Blue into the gaping
lock of the invaders' space ship wondering
how he could warn Earth. The Space
Patrol cruiser was due in for refueling at
his service station in 21 days. But by that
time he probably would be mouldering in
the rocky dust of the asteroid.
It was pitch dark within the ship but the
Steel-Blue seemed to have no trouble at all
maneuvering through the maze of corridors.
Jon followed him, attached to one tentacle.
Finally Jon and his guide entered a circular
room, bright with light streaming from
a glass-like, bulging skylight. They apparently
were near topside of the vessel.
A Steel-Blue, more massive than his
guide and with four more pair of tentacles,
including two short ones that grew from the
top of its head, spoke out.
"This is the violator?" Jon's Steel-Blue
nodded.
"You know the penalty? Carry it out."
"He also is an inhabitant of this system,"
Jon's guide added.
"Examine him first, then give him the
death."
Jon Karyl shrugged as he was led from
the lighted room through more corridors.
If it got too bad he still had the stubray
pistol.
Anyway, he was curious. He'd taken on
the lonely, nerve-wracking job of service
station attendant just to see what it offered.
Here was a part of it, and it was certainly
something new.
"This is the examination room," his
Steel-Blue said, almost contemptuously.
A green effulgence surrounded him.
There
was a hiss. Simultaneously, as the
tiny microphone on the outside of his
suit picked up the hiss, he felt a chill go
through his body. Then it seemed as if a
half dozen hands were inside him, examining
his internal organs. His stomach contracted.
He felt a squeeze on his heart. His
lungs tickled.
There were several more queer motions
inside his body.
Then another Steel-Blue voice said:
"He is a soft-metal creature, made up of
metals that melt at a very low temperature.
He also contains a liquid whose makeup I
cannot ascertain by ray-probe. Bring him
back when the torture is done."
Jon Karyl grinned a trifle wryly. What
kind of torture could this be?
Would it last 21 days? He glanced at the
chronometer on his wrist.
Jon's Steel-Blue led him out of the alien
ship and halted expectantly just outside the
ship's lock.
Jon Karyl waited, too. He thought of the
stubray pistol holstered at his hip. Shoot my
way out? It'd be fun while it lasted. But he
toted up the disadvantages.
He either would have to find a hiding
place on the asteroid, and if the Steel-Blues
wanted him bad enough they could tear the
whole place to pieces, or somehow get
aboard the little life ship hidden in the
service station.
In that he would be just a sitting duck.
He shrugged off the slight temptation to
use the pistol. He was still curious.
And he was interested in staying alive as
long as possible. There was a remote chance
he might warn the SP ship. Unconsciously,
he glanced toward his belt to see the little
power pack which, if under ideal conditions,
could finger out fifty thousand miles into
space.
If he could somehow stay alive the 21
days he might be able to warn the patrol.
He couldn't do it by attempting to flee, for
his life would be snuffed out immediately.
The Steel-Blue said quietly:
"It might be ironical to let you warn
that SP ship you keep thinking about. But
we know your weapon now. Already our
ship is equipped with a force field designed
especially to deflect your atomic guns."
Jon Karyl covered up his thoughts
quickly. They can delve deeper than the
surface of the mind. Or wasn't I keeping a
leash on my thoughts?
The Steel-Blue chuckled. "You get—absent-minded,
is it?—every once in a
while."
Just then four other Steel-Blues appeared
lugging great sheets of plastic and various
other equipment.
They dumped their loads and began unbundling
them.
Working swiftly, they built a plastic
igloo, smaller than the living room in the
larger service station igloo. They ranged instruments
inside—one of them Jon Karyl
recognized as an air pump from within the
station—and they laid out a pallet.
When they were done Jon saw a miniature
reproduction of the service station, lacking
only the cannon cap and fin, and with clear
plastic walls instead of the opaqueness of the
other.
His Steel-Blue said: "We have reproduced
the atmosphere of your station so that you
be watched while you undergo the torture
under the normal conditions of your life."
"What is this torture?" Jon Karyl asked.
The answer was almost caressing: "It is
a liquid we use to dissolve metals. It causes
joints to harden if even so much as a drop
remains on it long. It eats away the metal,
leaving a scaly residue which crumbles
eventually into dust.
"We will dilute it with a harmless liquid
for you since No. 1 does not wish you to die
instantly.
"Enter your"—the Steel-Blue hesitated—"mausoleum.
You die in your own atmosphere.
However, we took the liberty of purifying
it. There were dangerous elements in
it."
Jon walked into the little igloo. The
Steel-Blues sealed the lock, fingered dials
and switches on the outside. Jon's space suit
deflated. Pressure was building up in the
igloo.
He took a sample of the air, found that
it was good, although quite rich in oxygen
compared with what he'd been using in the
service station and in his suit.
With a sigh of relief he took off his helmet
and gulped huge draughts of the air.
He sat down on the pallet and waited
for the torture to begin.
The Steel Blues crowded about the igloo,
staring at him through elliptical eyes.
Apparently, they too, were waiting for the
torture to begin.
Jon thought the excess of oxygen was
making him light-headed.
He stared at a cylinder which was beginning
to sprout tentacles from the circle.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. An
opening, like the adjustable eye-piece of a
spacescope, was appearing in the center of
the cylinder.
A square, glass-like tumbler sat in the
opening disclosed in the four-foot cylinder
that had sprouted tentacles. It contained a
yellowish liquid.
One of the tentacles reached into the
opening and clasped the glass. The opening
closed and the cylinder, propelled by locomotor
appendages, moved toward Jon.
He didn't like the looks of the liquid in
the tumbler. It looked like an acid of some
sort. He raised to his feet.
He unsheathed the stubray gun and prepared
to blast the cylinder.
The
cylinder moved so fast Jon felt his
eyes jump in his head. He brought the
stubray gun up—but he was helpless. The
pistol kept on going up. With a deft movement,
one of the tentacles had speared it
from his hand and was holding it out of
his reach.
Jon kicked at the glass in the cylinder's
hand. But he was too slow. Two tentacles
gripped the kicking leg. Another struck him
in the chest, knocking him to the pallet. The
same tentacle, assisted by a new one,
pinioned his shoulders.
Four tentacles held him supine. The cylinder
lifted a glass-like cap from the tumbler
of liquid.
Lying there helplessly, Jon was remembering
an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid.
Something about a fellow named Socrates
who was given a cup of hemlock to drink.
It was the finis for Socrates. But the old
hero had been nonchalant and calm about
the whole thing.
With a sigh, Jon Karyl, who was curious
unto death, relaxed and said, "All right,
bub, you don't have to force-feed me. I'll
take it like a man."
The cylinder apparently understood him,
for it handed him the tumbler. It even reholstered
his stubray pistol.
Jon brought the glass of liquid under his
nose. The fumes of the liquid were pungent.
It brought tears to his eyes.
He looked at the cylinder, then at the
Steel-Blues crowding around the plastic
igloo. He waved the glass at the audience.
"To Earth, ever triumphant," he toasted.
Then he drained the glass at a gulp.
Its taste was bitter, and he felt hot
prickles jab at his scalp. It was like eating
very hot peppers. His eyes filled with tears.
He coughed as the stuff went down.
But he was still alive, he thought in
amazement. He'd drunk the hemlock and
was still alive.
The reaction set in quickly. He hadn't
known until then how tense he'd been. Now
with the torture ordeal over, he relaxed. He
laid down on the pallet and went to sleep.
There was one lone Steel-Blue watching
him when he rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes and sat up.
He vanished almost instantly. He, or another
like him, returned immediately accompanied
by a half-dozen others, including
the multi-tentacled creature known as No. 1.
One said,
"You are alive." The thought registered
amazement. "When you lost consciousness,
we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as
you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I
was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep."
The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture
will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping
away.
The cylinder business began again. This
time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying
to figure out what it was. It had a
familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't
quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced
at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before
the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last
until then? But he was growing more and
more conscious that his belly was screaming
for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge
off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that
Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get
something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in
the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching
as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed
his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the
stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked
out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol.
The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and
striding toward his own igloo adjacent to
the service station when a Steel-Blue
accosted him.
"Out of my way," grunted Jon, waving
the stubray. "I'm hungry."
"I'm the first Steel-Blue you met," said
the creature who barred his way. "Go back
to your torture."
"But I'm so hungry I'll chew off one of
your tentacles and eat it without seasoning."
"Eat?" The Steel-Blue sounded puzzled.
"I want to refuel. I've got to have food
to keep my engine going."
Steel-Blue chuckled. "So the hemlock, as
you call it, is beginning to affect you at
last? Back to the torture room."
"Like R-dust," Jon growled. He pressed
the firing stud on the stubray gun. One of
Steel-Blue's tentacles broke off and fell to
the rocky sward.
Steel-Blue jerked out the box he'd used
once before. A tentacle danced over it.
Abruptly Jon found himself standing on
a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a
swath around him 15 feet deep and five feet
wide.
"Back to the room," Steel-Blue commanded.
Jon resheathed the stubray pistol,
shrugged non-committally and leaped the
trench. He walked slowly back and reentered
the torture chamber.
The Steel-Blues rapidly repaired the damage
he'd done.
As he watched them, Jon was still curious,
but he was getting mad underneath at
the cold egoism of the Steel-Blues.
By the shimmering clouds of Earth, by
her green fields, and dark forests, he'd
stay alive to warn the SP ship.
Yes, he'd stay alive till then. And send
the story of the Steel-Blues' corrosive acid
to it. Then hundreds of Earth's ships could
equip themselves with spray guns and squirt
citric acid and watch the Steel-Blues fade
away.
It sounded almost silly to Jon Karyl. The
fruit acid of Earth to repel these invaders—it
doesn't sound possible. That couldn't be
the answer.
Citric acid wasn't the answer, Jon Karyl
discovered a week later.
The Steel-Blue who had captured him in
the power room of the service station came
in to examine him.
"You're still holding out, I see," he observed
after poking Jon in every sensitive
part of his body.
"I'll suggest to No. 1 that we increase
the power of the—ah—hemlock. How do
you feel?"
Between the rich oxygen and the dizziness
of hunger, Jon was a bit delirious. But he
answered honestly enough: "My guts feel as
if they're chewing each other up. My bones
ache. My joints creak. I can't coordinate I'm
so hungry."
"That is the hemlock," Steel-Blue said.
It was when he quaffed the new and
stronger draught that Jon knew that his
hope that it was citric acid was squelched.
The acid taste was weaker which meant
that the citric acid was the diluting liquid.
It was the liquid he couldn't taste beneath
the tang of the citric acid that was the corrosive
acid.
On the fourteenth day, Jon was so weak
he didn't feel much like moving around. He
let the cylinder feed him the hemlock.
No. 1 came again to see him, and went
away chuckling, "Decrease the dilution.
This Earthman at last is beginning to
suffer."
Staying
alive had now become a fetish
with Jon.
On the sixteenth day, the Earthman realized
that the Steel-Blues also were waiting
for the SP ship.
The extra-terrestrials had repaired the
blue ship where the service station atomic
ray had struck. And they were doing a little
target practice with plastic bubbles only a
few miles above the asteroid.
When his chronometer clocked off the
beginning of the twenty-first day, Jon received
a tumbler of the hemlock from the
hands of No. 1 himself.
"It is the hemlock," he chuckled, "undiluted.
Drink it and your torture is over.
You will die before your SP ship is destroyed.
"We have played with you long enough.
Today we begin to toy with your SP ship.
Drink up, Earthman, drink to enslavement."
Weak though he was Jon lunged to his
feet, spilling the tumbler of liquid. It ran
cool along the plastic arm of his space suit.
He changed his mind about throwing the
contents on No. 1.
With a smile he set the glass at his lips
and drank. Then he laughed at No. 1.
"The SP ship will turn your ship into
jelly."
No. 1 swept out, chuckling. "Boast if you
will, Earthman, it's your last chance."
There was an exultation in Jon's heart
that deadened the hunger and washed away
the nausea.
At last he knew what the hemlock was.
He sat on the pallet adjusting the little
power-pack radio. The SP ship should now
be within range of the set. The space patrol
was notorious for its accuracy in keeping to
schedule. Seconds counted like years. They
had to be on the nose, or it meant disaster
or death.
He sent out the call letters.
"AX to SP-101 ... AX to SP-101 ... AX
to SP-101 ..."
Three times he sent the call, then began
sending his message, hoping that his signal
was reaching the ship. He couldn't know if
they answered. Though the power pack
could get out a message over a vast distance,
it could not pick up messages even
when backed by an SP ship's power unless
the ship was only a few hundred miles
away.
The power pack was strictly a distress
signal.
He didn't know how long he'd been
sending, nor how many times his weary
voice had repeated the short but desperate
message.
He kept watching the heavens and hoping.
Abruptly he knew the SP ship was coming,
for the blue ship of the Steel-Blues was
rising silently from the asteroid.
Up and up it rose, then flames flickered
in a circle about its curious shape. The ship
disappeared, suddenly accelerating.
Jon Karyl strained his eyes.
Finally he looked away from the heavens
to the two Steel-Blues who stood negligently
outside the goldfish bowl.
Once more, Jon used the stubray pistol.
He marched out of the plastic igloo and ran
toward the service station.
He didn't know how weak he was until
he stumbled and fell only a few feet from
his prison.
The Steel-Blues just watched him.
He crawled on, around the circular pit in
the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue
had shown him the power of his
weapon.
He'd been crawling through a nightmare
for years when the quiet voice penetrated
his dulled mind.
"Take it easy, Karyl. You're among
friends."
He pried open his eyes with his will. He
saw the blue and gold of a space guard's
uniform. He sighed and drifted into unconsciousness.
He was
still weak days later when
Capt. Ron Small of SP-101 said,
"Yes, Karyl, it's ironical. They fed you
what they thought was sure death, and it's
the only thing that kept you going long
enough to warn us."
"I was dumb for a long time," Karyl said.
"I thought that it was the acid, almost to
the very last. But when I drank that last
glass, I knew they didn't have a chance.
"They were metal monsters. No wonder
they feared that liquid. It would rust their
joints, short their wiring, and kill them.
No wonder they stared when I kept alive
after drinking enough to completely annihilate
a half-dozen of them.
"But what happened when you met the
ship?"
The space captain grinned.
"Not much. Our crew was busy creating
a hollow shell filled with water to be shot
out of a rocket tube converted into a projectile
thrower.
"These Steel-Blues, as you call them, put
traction beams on us and started tugging us
toward the asteroid. We tried a couple of
atomic shots but when they just glanced off,
we gave up.
"They weren't expecting the shell of
water. When it hit that blue ship, you could
almost see it oxidize before your eyes.
"I guess they knew what was wrong right
away. They let go the traction beams and
tried to get away. They forgot about the
force field, so we just poured atomic fire
into the weakening ship. It just melted
away."
Jon Karyl got up from the divan where
he'd been lying. "They thought I was a
metal creature, too. But where do you suppose
they came from?"
The captain shrugged. "Who knows?"
Jon set two glasses on the table.
"Have a drink of the best damn water in
the solar system?" He asked Capt. Small.
"Don't mind if I do."
The water twinkled in the two glasses,
winking as if it knew just what it had
done.
|
What is the significance of Hogey’s feet being stuck in concrete?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller.
Relevant chunks:
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
Question:
What is the significance of Hogey’s feet being stuck in concrete?
Answer:
|
[
"There is an ironic significance in Hogey’s feet being stuck in concrete. Throughout the story, Hogey’s identity is tied to being a tumbler - a spaceman. Not only does he physically look like a spacer with his sun-burned marks from his goggles, he has also been blinded by the sun’s glare. It is only due to these characteristics that other people give him allowances while Hogey is in a drunken stupor. \n\nHogey constantly speaks to separate himself from everyone else - even his wife - by identifying as a tumbler and them as hoofers. He insists that he was born as a tumbler and belongs in space, and hence blames his drunken inability to walk as due to a difficulty in adjusting to the gravity on Earth. He insists that he has to become a hoofer, but refuses to, and at the end of the story even denounces his wife and child. It is ironic then, that by Hogey’s feet being stuck in the concrete, he has reluctantly become a hoofer as his feet are literally encased in the Earth. \n",
"Before Hogey’s feet are stuck in concrete, he keeps thinking about his time in space, despising people who live on Earth as he believes the spacers know what truly lies behind the fake phenomenon of the sun and moon seen from the Earth. He doesn’t realize the reality of living on Earth and the significance of his family. After Hogey’s feet are stuck in concrete, he hears his son crying when he is lying on the ground and trying to get his feet out of the concrete. The crying of the firstborn reminds him of the reality that he will live on Earth, with gravity, in the future. There will be no more space travel for him but maybe his son. He used to blame his return on his son and the overall situation, but after being stuck in the concrete and hearing his son crying, he realizes that it is not anyone’s fault that he is strongly influenced by the space life and fails to fulfill his responsibilities as a father and a husband. It is nobody’s but his fault for all the things that happened. He feels belonging to Earth after his feet are physically stuck tight to the earth.",
"After struggling with going to the house, Hogey finally decides to approach. As soon as his ex-wife’s brother appears outside, Hogey freezes and backs out of his plan of approaching the house. He seems to struggle a lot with the decision of either entering the house or not. After reconnecting with his dog, Hogey falls down, and his feet go into what seems to be muddy sand. Hogey doesn’t seem to care and falls asleep with his feet still inside. He wakes up a few hours later with the dog licking him, and he realizes that he was actually stuck in concrete. This gives him no choice but to call for help from the house, and he ends up being found by the men of the house. \n",
"Hogey’s feet being stuck in concrete shows that he has no chance to escape even if he wants to desperately. Throughout the entire story, he refers to himself as a tumbler with no place in a family. He battles with feelings of conflict for visiting his wife and child, believing that a tumbler has no right to a family. The concrete also forces him to confront his fears, even if he is not sure what he will say to Marie about money when he sees her. He contemplates leaving Hauptman's house a lot, but the concrete forces him to stay until he is found and brought back into the family. In a way, the concrete also makes him become a hoofer despite him constantly referring to himself as being different from everybody else. With his feet grounded to the earth, he has no choice but to also become a hoofer like everybody else. "
] |
29170
|
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
|
Describe the difference between a tumbler and a hoofer.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller.
Relevant chunks:
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
Question:
Describe the difference between a tumbler and a hoofer.
Answer:
|
[
"A tumbler and a hoofer are considered to be two types of people, as described by Hogey’s drunken ramblings. A tumbler is someone who lives in space and never interacts with gravity. As such, a tumbler is often clumsy and has limbs that flail about. In addition, a tumbler is not meant to be a family man, and should neither have a wife nor children. \n\nTherefore, a hoofer is a person who lives on Earth and is rooted to the ground by gravity, as they have never traveled to space. By contrast, they would have a family, like Marie Parker does with her son. In addition, the hoofers in this story are stable and kind, like the farmer and the bus driver, who all help Hogey when his limbs and center of gravity fail him. \n",
"A tumbler is a person who lives in space, where there is no gravity. They may fear to be in an open space as a result of staying in the outer space too long. Their legs are not used to the gravity, which makes them hard to walk properly on Earth. They can naturally equate time to position. They have bad visions because their eyes are harmed by the direct contact to the sun. Their faces are harmed by the direct exposure to the sun in the space. Sun looks brightly pain and white to them as they see it in the bottomless dark space where sun is the largest source of light. A hoofer is a person who lives on Earth where there is gravity. They are used to walk with gravity, unlike a tumbler. Sun looks red to them when it sets. Their visions are not harmed by the direct exposure to the sun, neither are their faces.",
"Hoofers are humans that have stayed on Earth all their life. They are everyday humans that live their lives without ever going to space. The bus driver, and Hogey’s wife are examples of Hoofers. Tumblers on the other hand are people that have traveled to space, and worked there. Hogey is an example of a tumbler, and is an example of all the problems that tumblers face when they go back to Earth. Tumbler’s aren’t allowed to have children, a rule that Hogey broke. Hogey also struggles a lot with Earth’s gravity, because tumblers spend a lot of time in space in which there is no gravity. ",
"A hoofer is an ordinary human who lives on Earth. They do not go to space at all, and they spend their lives on the planet. Everybody who Big Hogey meets on his way home is considered to be a hoofer because they have never been to space before. Compared to being a hoofer, a tumbler is somebody who has spent most of their time in space. People, like Big Hogey, find it difficult to adjust to gravity after having spent so much time away from Earth. The tumblers are also not meant to have a family, as fathers are not supposed to be allowed into space. The hoofers, on the other hand, can have regular families and go about their daily lives because they do not have to abide by the same requirements as the tumblers have to for their line of work. The tumblers also go on multiple space hitches, despite the promise of money. "
] |
29170
|
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
|
Describe the setting of this story.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller.
Relevant chunks:
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
Question:
Describe the setting of this story.
Answer:
|
[
"This story takes place on Earth. As we are following the protagonist’s journey home, the setting constantly changes in terms of transportation mode and the landscape. First, we can identify the setting as a public bus, where Hogey occupies the back seats of the bus as he falls asleep clutching his gin. Hogey gets off at his stop - Caine’s junction - which is a road junction with just a few farmhouses at the side and a derelict filling station. There is also a ditch, which he promptly stumbles into. The landscape reveals the Great Plains country, with descriptions of the setting being treeless and barren, and instead being full of rolling hills and fields of grass.\n\nTowards the end of the story, the setting changes to the Hauptman’s place where the farmhouse sits off the side of the road with a barbed-wire fence. Within the tall grass of the farmhouse also lies a sloppy heap of sand - concrete. \n",
"It is in late August. The first scene is on a bus. After the protagonist gets out of the bus, he sits at a road junction. Along the side of the road, there is gravel. Next to the railroad tracks, a freight building, several farmhouses, and a filling station stand across the road. The land is barren, unwooded, and rolling. The hills around are dusty. There is a ditch along the road, the bottom of which is wet and muddy. The protagonist’s house is about three miles from there. A wheat field and a few trees surround the house. Beyond the ditch next to the road, a tall grass lies. Six miles away to the west, there is a rocket launching station. A narrow path along with the barbed-wire fence leads toward the house. The hedge divides the peach trees from the field inside the fence gap. Some old boards, a shovel and pick, a sand pile, a stack of new lumbers, and a concrete mixer lie on the ground. There is a porch light next to the screen door of the house. ",
"The story takes place on Earth. It starts off in a bus, and then it continues to be set in what seems to be a side road off a highway. Hogey is on his way to his house, which is described to be isolated, like a farmhouse. The house is big and has dogs, which make it more similar to a farmhouse. Hogey also remembers his time in space, which was described as a floating station full of tubes and metal machines that continued falling, and the people inside fell with it. The story seems to be set in the future, but it could very well be set only a few from now. ",
"The story is set on Earth and on a bus. Hogey initially sits next to a housewife on the bus, but he is moved to the back after. There is a highway near the area where Hogey is dropped off, and he falls into a ditch when the sun goes down. There is a farm road to go into, and a side-road for cars to turn onto. At Hauptman's road, there is a narrow drive that leads to the barbed wire of the farmhouse. There is also a peach tree next to the house, and a porch. Eventually, Hogey gets himself stuck in concrete. There is a pile of wood boards, a careful stack of new lumber, a pick and a shovel, a sand-pile, heaps of freshly-turned earth, and a concrete mixer near the area that his feet are stuck inside of. "
] |
29170
|
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hoofer by Walter M. Miller.
Relevant chunks:
A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"This story follows the protagonist, Hogey Parker’s, journey in heading back home after a long stint in space. His identity leans heavily on being a spacer - or a tumbler - with distinguishing sunburned marks and glare-blinded eyes. Parker is accompanied by a bottle of gin, and with it, stumbles onto a bus. In his drunken ramblings and stumblings - attributed by himself to him being a spaceman - Hogey creates a ruckus on the bus and disturbs its passengers. Fellow passengers give him allowances as he’s a spaceman and help him out. \n\nThroughout his journey, he is helped by various characters who further progress his journey back home. After being dropped off, the bus driver helps him across the road, where he is later then picked up by a farmer who drops Hogey off even closer to his farmhouse. In between, Hogey constantly looks up at the Big Bottomless space and thinks about his time in space with particular feelings of resentment and anger - one towards the sun for blinding him and another towards the rookie that replaced him. After finally making it close to his farmhouse, he sneaks through the grass past the fence and encounters the dog, who he quickly shushes when one of his wife’s brothers comes out to investigate the noise. Staring at his wife and son through the house, he stumbles into wet concrete and quickly becomes stuck in the sand as it dries. Despite his best efforts he is unable to claw himself out. At the end of the story, his cries at being stuck in the concrete echo at the same time the cries of his son as the Hauptmann men find him, stuck. \n",
"Big Hogey Parker, a tumbler who comes back to Earth from his nine-month stay in the space, can hardly behave appropriately on the bus because of his unaccustomedness to the gravity and the drunkenness. He harasses and annoys the passengers on the bus, gets warned by the driver, and sleeps on the rear seat of the bus. After the bus stop at Caine’s junction, the bus driver helps him get out of the bus and safely cross the road. While crossing the road, Hogey talks about the importance of family and learns that the driver has two daughters. After crossing the road, the driver asks whether someone will come and pick Hogey up, but Hogey tells him that he is a week late and nobody will come. The driver tells him to wait for a car and leaves. Hogey stares at the sun while waiting, feeling unfamiliar with the gravity.\n\nHogey starts to lurch in the middle of the road. A car almost hits him when he fails to control his balance. A man comes out of the car and shouts at him. The man realizes that Hogey is Marie’s husband through the conversation, so he drives Hogey to a place near Marie’s house. Hogey takes a nap in the grass near the ditch until the night. He swallows a few gins, checks the time with the star's position in the sky as he pawns his watch in the poker game that he lost all of the money, and walks toward the house. He is afraid of facing his wife and son as he lost all the money in a poker game two weeks ago after his wife had waited for him for so long to do all the space travel to earn money. He wants to run away. He walks through the fence, trampling through some boards when the dog barks. He hides in the shadow of the peach tree when Marie’s brother comes out to check. The dog comes at him, and Hogey calms the dog, waiting until the man goes inside the house. When Hogey keeps walking, he steps into a concrete mixer with sand and falls. He takes off his shoes and puts his bare feet back in the muddy sand. Laying on the sand, Hogey falls asleep. Past midnight, he gets awakened by the dog's licking, finding his feet stuck in the concrete. Reflecting on his time in the space and the people there, Hogey feels desperate. Suddenly, he hears his son cry. The cry brings Hogey’s consciousness back from the space to where he is, and the significance of his family strikes him. He calls out loud for help and sobs with his feet stuck tight. He will live on Earth with gravity from now on.\n",
"The story focuses on a man named Hogey. Hogey is trying to return to his wife and child, but seems to find it very difficult because he has been drinking, and because his body needs to adapt to being back on Earth. The story begins in a bus, where Hogey is very drunk and is trying to talk to other passengers. The other passengers help Hogey sleep, but he wakes up again and continues speaking with others. When the bus reaches his stop, Hogey clumsily gets off the bus. When the driver sees that Hogey needs help, he helps Hogey sit down in the street and tells him to wait for a ride instead of walking to his wife’s house. Hogey waits for a while, then decides to walk. He falls in a ditch, but he is helped by a couple who passes in a car. The man tells him that his wife remarried and that he is going to the new husband’s house. After the man drops him off, Hogey falls asleep close to the house. He sleeps for a while and afterwards he tries to go into the house, but he struggles mentally to accept what he is doing. He ends up falling in cement, and his feet get stuck. We learn that Hogey worked in space a lot, and that he was afraid to go back to earth because of the amount of time that he had been away. \n\n",
"Everybody immediately knows that Big Hogey Parker is a spacer and goes out of their way to help him even if he is harassing a housewife. He reveals that he was kidding about being an Indian, and there are two men who lead him back to his seat. When the driver threatens to turn him over, Big Hogey apologizes and sits in his seat until it is time to leave, and the driver asks if he is okay once he staggers to cross the highway. The man asks if somebody is supposed to meet Big Hogey, but he says that it is a surprise for everybody. He is redirected to sit at the culvert, but gravity makes it difficult for him to walk. As the sun sets, Hogey stares at it because he hates it for what it truly is and what it did to his eyes. A burly farmer angrily confronts him when he stumbles down the road again, but he reveals that he is married to Marie Hauptman. They offer to drop him off at the area near Hauptman's road, and Hogey finds himself too tired to go on because it is twilight. When he awakes again, it is night time. He takes another sip of his gin and decides how the meeting will go. Hogey is worried about the money, especially since he has gone on six hitches in space with the promise that each one would be his last one. As he goes near the house, a dog suddenly comes out and barks. One of Marie’s brothers comes out to investigate the situation too, but he finds nothing and returns home with the dog. He tries to think about why a tumbler like him would be married with a son, and he finds both his feet losing the strength to move. The dog, Hooky, comes up to greet him again, but he angrily sends it away. Hogey thinks back to his crew, and a baby begins to cry suddenly. He yells for help, and the lights come on again because the baby begins to cry more. The kid had been an accident, and he knows that a tumblr has no business with a family. However, there is nobody to blame for this. Big Hogey sits with his foot locked in the solid concrete and sobs when the rest of the men find him. "
] |
29170
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A wayfarer's return from a far country to his wife and family may be a
shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon. Or it may be so shadowed
by Time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his
absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly
human story by a brilliant newcomer to the science fantasy field is told
with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you.
the hoofer
by ... Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A space rover has no business with a family. But what can a man
in the full vigor of youth do—if his heart cries out for a home?
They all
knew he was a spacer
because of the white goggle marks
on his sun-scorched face, and so
they tolerated him and helped him.
They even made allowances for him
when he staggered and fell in the
aisle of the bus while pursuing the
harassed little housewife from seat
to seat and cajoling her to sit and
talk with him.
Having fallen, he decided to
sleep in the aisle. Two men helped
him to the back of the bus, dumped
him on the rear seat, and tucked his
gin bottle safely out of sight. After
all, he had not seen Earth for nine
months, and judging by the crusted
matter about his eyelids, he couldn't
have seen it too well now, even if
he had been sober. Glare-blindness,
gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were
excuses for a lot of things, when a
man was just back from Big Bottomless.
And who could blame a
man for acting strangely?
Minutes later, he was back up the
aisle and swaying giddily over the
little housewife. "How!" he said.
"Me Chief Broken Wing. You
wanta Indian wrestle?"
The girl, who sat nervously staring
at him, smiled wanly, and
shook her head.
"Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he
burbled affectionately, crashing into
the seat beside her.
The two men slid out of their
seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder.
"Come on, Broken Wing, let's
go back to bed."
"My name's Hogey," he said.
"Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding
about being a Indian."
"Yeah. Come on, let's go have a
drink." They got him on his feet,
and led him stumbling back down
the aisle.
"My ma was half Cherokee, see?
That's how come I said it. You
wanta hear a war whoop? Real
stuff."
"Never mind."
He cupped his hands to his
mouth and favored them with a
blood-curdling proof of his ancestry,
while the female passengers
stirred restlessly and hunched in
their seats. The driver stopped the
bus and went back to warn him
against any further display. The
driver flashed a deputy's badge and
threatened to turn him over to a
constable.
"I gotta get home," Big Hogey
told him. "I got me a son now,
that's why. You know? A little
baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen
him yet."
"Will you just sit still and be
quiet then, eh?"
Big Hogey nodded emphatically.
"Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to
make any trouble."
When the bus started again, he
fell on his side and lay still. He
made retching sounds for a time,
then rested, snoring softly. The bus
driver woke him again at Caine's
junction, retrieved his gin bottle
from behind the seat, and helped
him down the aisle and out of the
bus.
Big Hogey stumbled about for a
moment, then sat down hard in the
gravel at the shoulder of the road.
The driver paused with one foot on
the step, looking around. There was
not even a store at the road junction,
but only a freight building
next to the railroad track, a couple
of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road,
and, just across the way, a deserted
filling station with a sagging
roof. The land was Great Plains
country, treeless, barren, and rolling.
Big Hogey got up and staggered
around in front of the bus, clutching
at it for support, losing his
duffle bag.
"Hey, watch the traffic!" The
driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome
compassion he trotted
around after his troublesome passenger,
taking his arm as he sagged
again. "You crossing?"
"Yah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme
alone, I'm okay."
The driver started across the
highway with him. The traffic was
sparse, but fast and dangerous in
the central ninety-mile lane.
"I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting.
"I'm a tumbler, ya know?
Gravity's got me. Damn gravity.
I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I
used to be a tumbler— huk! —only
now I gotta be a hoofer. 'Count
of li'l Hogey. You know about li'l
Hogey?"
"Yeah. Your son. Come on."
"Say, you gotta son? I bet you
gotta son."
"Two kids," said the driver,
catching Hogey's bag as it slipped
from his shoulder. "Both girls."
"Say, you oughta be home with
them kids. Man oughta stick with
his family. You oughta get another
job." Hogey eyed him owlishly,
waggled a moralistic finger, skidded
on the gravel as they stepped
onto the opposite shoulder, and
sprawled again.
The driver blew a weary breath,
looked down at him, and shook his
head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find
a constable after all. This guy could
get himself killed, wandering
around loose.
"Somebody supposed to meet
you?" he asked, squinting around
at the dusty hills.
" Huk! —who, me?" Hogey giggled,
belched, and shook his head.
"Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming.
S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a
week ago." He looked up at the
driver with a pained expression.
"Week late, ya know? Marie's
gonna be sore—woo- hoo !—is she
gonna be sore!" He waggled his
head severely at the ground.
"Which way are you going?" the
driver grunted impatiently.
Hogey pointed down the side-road
that led back into the hills.
"Marie's pop's place. You know
where? 'Bout three miles from
here. Gotta walk, I guess."
"Don't," the driver warned.
"You sit there by the culvert till
you get a ride. Okay?"
Hogey nodded forlornly.
"Now stay out of the road," the
driver warned, then hurried back
across the highway. Moments later,
the atomic battery-driven motors
droned mournfully, and the bus
pulled away.
Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing
the back of his neck. "Nice
people," he said. "Nice buncha people.
All hoofers."
With a grunt and a lurch, he got
to his feet, but his legs wouldn't
work right. With his tumbler's reflexes,
he fought to right himself
with frantic arm motions, but gravity
claimed him, and he went stumbling
into the ditch.
"Damn legs, damn crazy legs!"
he cried.
The bottom of the ditch was wet,
and he crawled up the embankment
with mud-soaked knees, and sat on
the shoulder again. The gin bottle
was still intact. He had himself a
long fiery drink, and it warmed him
deep down. He blinked around at
the gaunt and treeless land.
The sun was almost down, forge-red
on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked
sky faded into sulphurous
yellow toward the zenith, and the
very air that hung over the land
seemed full of yellow smoke, the
omnipresent dust of the plains.
A farm truck turned onto the
side-road and moaned away, its
driver hardly glancing at the dark
young man who sat swaying on his
duffle bag near the culvert. Hogey
scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just
kept staring at the crazy sun.
He shook his head. It wasn't really
the sun. The sun, the real sun,
was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in
the dead black pit. It painted everything
with pure white pain, and you
saw things by the reflected pain-light.
The fat red sun was strictly a
phoney, and it didn't fool him any.
He hated it for what he knew it was
behind the gory mask, and for what
it had done to his eyes.
With a grunt, he got to his feet,
managed to shoulder the duffle bag,
and started off down the middle of
the farm road, lurching from side
to side, and keeping his eyes on the
rolling distances. Another car turned
onto the side-road, honking angrily.
Hogey tried to turn around to
look at it, but he forgot to shift his
footing. He staggered and went
down on the pavement. The car's
tires screeched on the hot asphalt.
Hogey lay there for a moment,
groaning. That one had hurt his
hip. A car door slammed and a big
man with a florid face got out and
stalked toward him, looking angry.
"What the hell's the matter with
you, fella?" he drawled. "You
soused? Man, you've really got a
load."
Hogey got up doggedly, shaking
his head to clear it. "Space legs," he
prevaricated. "Got space legs. Can't
stand the gravity."
The burly farmer retrieved his
gin bottle for him, still miraculously
unbroken. "Here's your gravity,"
he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better
get home pronto."
"Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest,
I'm just space burned. You
know?"
"Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway?
Do you live around here?"
It was obvious that the big man
had taken him for a hobo or a
tramp. Hogey pulled himself together.
"Goin' to the Hauptman's
place. Marie. You know Marie?"
The farmer's eyebrows went up.
"Marie Hauptman? Sure I know
her. Only she's Marie Parker now.
Has been, nigh on six years. Say—"
He paused, then gaped. "You ain't
her husband by any chance?"
"Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey
Parker."
"Well, I'll be—! Get in the car.
I'm going right past John Hauptman's
place. Boy, you're in no
shape to walk it."
He grinned wryly, waggled his
head, and helped Hogey and his
bag into the back seat. A woman
with a sun-wrinkled neck sat rigidly
beside the farmer in the front,
and she neither greeted the passenger
nor looked around.
"They don't make cars like this
anymore," the farmer called over
the growl of the ancient gasoline
engine and the grind of gears.
"You can have them new atomics
with their loads of hot isotopes
under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh,
Martha?"
The woman with the sun-baked
neck quivered her head slightly.
"A car like this was good enough
for Pa, an' I reckon it's good
enough for us," she drawled mournfully.
Five minutes later the car drew
in to the side of the road. "Reckon
you can walk it from here," the
farmer said. "That's Hauptman's
road just up ahead."
He helped Hogey out of the car
and drove away without looking
back to see if Hogey stayed on his
feet. The woman with the sun-baked
neck was suddenly talking
garrulously in his direction.
It was twilight. The sun had set,
and the yellow sky was turning
gray. Hogey was too tired to go on,
and his legs would no longer hold
him. He blinked around at the land,
got his eyes focused, and found
what looked like Hauptman's place
on a distant hillside. It was a big
frame house surrounded by a wheatfield,
and a few scrawny trees. Having
located it, he stretched out in
the tall grass beyond the ditch to
take a little rest.
Somewhere dogs were barking,
and a cricket sang creaking monotony
in the grass. Once there was the
distant thunder of a rocket blast
from the launching station six miles
to the west, but it faded quickly. An
A-motored convertible whined past
on the road, but Hogey went unseen.
When he awoke, it was night,
and he was shivering. His stomach
was screeching, and his nerves dancing
with high voltages. He sat up
and groped for his watch, then remembered
he had pawned it after
the poker game. Remembering the
game and the results of the game
made him wince and bite his lip
and grope for the bottle again.
He sat breathing heavily for a
moment after the stiff drink. Equating
time to position had become
second nature with him, but he had
to think for a moment because his
defective vision prevented him from
seeing the Earth-crescent.
Vega was almost straight above
him in the late August sky, so he
knew it wasn't much after sundown—probably
about eight o'clock. He
braced himself with another swallow
of gin, picked himself up and
got back to the road, feeling a little
sobered after the nap.
He limped on up the pavement
and turned left at the narrow drive
that led between barbed-wire fences
toward the Hauptman farmhouse,
five hundred yards or so from the
farm road. The fields on his left
belonged to Marie's father, he
knew. He was getting close—close
to home and woman and child.
He dropped the bag suddenly
and leaned against a fence post,
rolling his head on his forearms
and choking in spasms of air. He
was shaking all over, and his belly
writhed. He wanted to turn and
run. He wanted to crawl out in the
grass and hide.
What were they going to say?
And Marie, Marie most of all.
How was he going to tell her about
the money?
Six hitches in space, and every
time the promise had been the
same: One more tour, baby, and
we'll have enough dough, and then
I'll quit for good. One more time,
and we'll have our stake—enough
to open a little business, or buy a
house with a mortgage and get a
job.
And she had waited, but the
money had never been quite enough
until this time. This time the tour
had lasted nine months, and he had
signed on for every run from station
to moon-base to pick up the
bonuses. And this time he'd made
it. Two weeks ago, there had been
forty-eight hundred in the bank.
And now ...
" Why? " he groaned, striking his
forehead against his forearms. His
arm slipped, and his head hit the
top of the fencepost, and the pain
blinded him for a moment. He staggered
back into the road with a
low roar, wiped blood from his
forehead, and savagely kicked his
bag.
It rolled a couple of yards up the
road. He leaped after it and kicked
it again. When he had finished
with it, he stood panting and angry,
but feeling better. He shouldered
the bag and hiked on toward the
farmhouse.
They're hoofers, that's all—just
an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers,
even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A
born tumbler. Know what that
means? It means—God, what does
it mean? It means out in Big Bottomless,
where Earth's like a fat
moon with fuzzy mold growing on
it. Mold, that's all you are, just
mold.
A dog barked, and he wondered
if he had been muttering aloud. He
came to a fence-gap and paused in
the darkness. The road wound
around and came up the hill in
front of the house. Maybe they were
sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd
already heard him coming. Maybe ...
He was trembling again. He
fished the fifth of gin out of his
coat pocket and sloshed it. Still over
half a pint. He decided to kill it. It
wouldn't do to go home with a
bottle sticking out of his pocket.
He stood there in the night wind,
sipping at it, and watching the reddish
moon come up in the east. The
moon looked as phoney as the
setting sun.
He straightened in sudden determination.
It had to be sometime.
Get it over with, get it over with
now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped
through, and closed it firmly
behind him. He retrieved his bag,
and waded quietly through the tall
grass until he reached the hedge
which divided an area of sickly
peach trees from the field. He got
over the hedge somehow, and started
through the trees toward the
house. He stumbled over some old
boards, and they clattered.
" Shhh! " he hissed, and moved
on.
The dogs were barking angrily,
and he heard a screen door slam.
He stopped.
"Ho there!" a male voice called
experimentally from the house.
One of Marie's brothers. Hogey
stood frozen in the shadow of a
peach tree, waiting.
"Anybody out there?" the man
called again.
Hogey waited, then heard the
man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic
'im."
The hound's bark became eager.
The animal came chasing down the
slope, and stopped ten feet away to
crouch and bark frantically at the
shadow in the gloom. He knew the
dog.
"Hooky!" he whispered. "Hooky
boy—here!"
The dog stopped barking, sniffed,
trotted closer, and went
" Rrrooff! " Then he started sniffing
suspiciously again.
"Easy, Hooky, here boy!" he
whispered.
The dog came forward silently,
sniffed his hand, and whined in
recognition. Then he trotted around
Hogey, panting doggy affection and
dancing an invitation to romp. The
man whistled from the porch. The
dog froze, then trotted quickly back
up the slope.
"Nothing, eh, Hooky?" the
man on the porch said. "Chasin'
armadillos again, eh?"
The screen door slammed again,
and the porch light went out.
Hogey stood there staring, unable
to think. Somewhere beyond the
window lights were—his woman,
his son.
What the hell was a tumbler doing
with a woman and a son?
After perhaps a minute, he stepped
forward again. He tripped over
a shovel, and his foot plunged into
something that went squelch and
swallowed the foot past the ankle.
He fell forward into a heap of
sand, and his foot went deeper into
the sloppy wetness.
He lay there with his stinging
forehead on his arms, cursing softly
and crying. Finally he rolled
over, pulled his foot out of the
mess, and took off his shoes. They
were full of mud—sticky sandy
mud.
The dark world was reeling
about him, and the wind was dragging
at his breath. He fell back
against the sand pile and let his
feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled
his toes. He was laughing
soundlessly, and his face was wet
in the wind. He couldn't think. He
couldn't remember where he was
and why, and he stopped caring,
and after a while he felt better.
The stars were swimming over
him, dancing crazily, and the mud
cooled his feet, and the sand was
soft behind him. He saw a rocket
go up on a tail of flame from the
station, and waited for the sound of
its blast, but he was already asleep
when it came.
It was far past midnight when he
became conscious of the dog licking
wetly at his ear and cheek. He
pushed the animal away with a low
curse and mopped at the side of his
face. He stirred, and groaned. His
feet were burning up! He tried to
pull them toward him, but they
wouldn't budge. There was something
wrong with his legs.
For an instant he stared wildly
around in the night. Then he remembered
where he was, closed his
eyes and shuddered. When he
opened them again, the moon had
emerged from behind a cloud, and
he could see clearly the cruel trap
into which he had accidentally
stumbled. A pile of old boards, a
careful stack of new lumber, a
pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps
of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete
mixer—well, it added up.
He gripped his ankles and pulled,
but his feet wouldn't budge. In
sudden terror, he tried to stand up,
but his ankles were clutched by the
concrete too, and he fell back in
the sand with a low moan. He lay
still for several minutes, considering
carefully.
He pulled at his left foot. It was
locked in a vise. He tugged even
more desperately at his right foot.
It was equally immovable.
He sat up with a whimper and
clawed at the rough concrete until
his nails tore and his fingertips
bled. The surface still felt damp,
but it had hardened while he slept.
He sat there stunned until Hooky
began licking at his scuffed fingers.
He shouldered the dog away, and
dug his hands into the sand-pile to
stop the bleeding. Hooky licked at
his face, panting love.
"Get away!" he croaked savagely.
The dog whined softly, trotted
a short distance away, circled, and
came back to crouch down in the
sand directly before Hogey, inching
forward experimentally.
Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry
sand and cursed between his teeth,
while his eyes wandered over the
sky. They came to rest on the sliver
of light—the space station—rising
in the west, floating out in Big Bottomless
where the gang was—Nichols
and Guerrera and Lavrenti
and Fats. And he wasn't forgetting
Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced
him.
Keesey would have a rough time
for a while—rough as a cob. The pit
was no playground. The first time
you went out of the station in a
suit, the pit got you. Everything
was falling, and you fell, with it.
Everything. The skeletons of steel,
the tire-shaped station, the spheres
and docks and nightmare shapes—all
tied together by umbilical cables
and flexible tubes. Like some crazy
sea-thing they seemed, floating in a
black ocean with its tentacles bound
together by drifting strands in the
dark tide that bore it.
Everything was pain-bright or
dead black, and it wheeled around
you, and you went nuts trying to
figure which way was down. In fact,
it took you months to teach your
body that all ways were down and
that the pit was bottomless.
He became conscious of a plaintive
sound in the wind, and froze to
listen.
It was a baby crying.
It was nearly a minute before he
got the significance of it. It hit him
where he lived, and he began jerking
frantically at his encased feet
and sobbing low in his throat.
They'd hear him if he kept that up.
He stopped and covered his ears to
close out the cry of his firstborn. A
light went on in the house, and
when it went off again, the infant's
cry had ceased.
Another rocket went up from the
station, and he cursed it. Space was
a disease, and he had it.
"Help!" he cried out suddenly.
"I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"
He knew he was yelling hysterically
at the sky and fighting the relentless
concrete that clutched his
feet, and after a moment he stopped.
The light was on in the house
again, and he heard faint sounds.
The stirring-about woke the baby
again, and once more the infant's
wail came on the breeze.
Make the kid shut up, make the
kid shut up ...
But that was no good. It wasn't
the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's
fault. No fathers allowed in space,
they said, but it wasn't their fault
either. They were right, and he had
only himself to blame. The kid was
an accident, but that didn't change
anything. Not a thing in the world.
It remained a tragedy.
A tumbler had no business with a
family, but what was a man going
to do? Take a skinning knife, boy,
and make yourself a eunuch. But
that was no good either. They needed
bulls out there in the pit, not
steers. And when a man came down
from a year's hitch, what was he
going to do? Live in a lonely shack
and read books for kicks? Because
you were a man, you sought out a
woman. And because she was a
woman, she got a kid, and that was
the end of it. It was nobody's fault,
nobody's at all.
He stared at the red eye of Mars
low in the southwest. They were
running out there now, and next
year he would have been on the
long long run ...
But there was no use thinking
about it. Next year and the years
after belonged to little Hogey.
He sat there with his feet locked
in the solid concrete of the footing,
staring out into Big Bottomless
while his son's cry came from the
house and the Hauptman menfolk
came wading through the tall grass
in search of someone who had cried
out. His feet were stuck tight, and
he wouldn't ever get them out. He
was sobbing softly when they found
him.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick.
Relevant chunks:
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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"Edward Loyce spends the whole day repairing the foundation. When he drives past the town park, he sees a thing hanging under the lamppost. He realizes that it’s a hanging human. Ed is frightened because of the hanged body and because everyone seems to not care about it. People walk past and ignore it. Ed tells the owners of other shops, trying to figure out the situation. However, both the owners think it is normal. After realizing he is the only one who feels strange, Ed gets closer to the hanged body, noticing that it’s a stranger. He bumps into Jenkins, a stationary clerk. Through the conversation with Jenkins and the jewelry store owner, he realizes that he is the only normal person in the town. He shouts to get the police, makes his way through the crowd, and finally gets into the police’s car.\n\nWhen he tries to understand the situation from the police, he realizes that the police are fake because he knows every cop in the town. He escapes from the fake police. When he gets closer to the police station, he sees a swarm of alien flies landing on the roof of City Hall and flying inside of the building, disguising themselves as men coming out of the City Hall. Ed realizes that they are aliens from other dimensions trying to control the humans and already control the minds of town people, except for him, as he escapes from it when repairing the foundation. He cautiously leaves and takes the bus. People on the bus are mind-controlled. A man with a book is looking at him, and Ed guesses the identity of the seemingly mind-clear man. When another older man ascends the bus and looks at the man with the book, Ed realizes the strangeness and escapes from the bus. Two men come after Ed, and Ed kills the man with the book and runs away. A doubt about killing the wrong person flashes through his mind, but he has no time to think.\n\nHe tells his wife to get ready to leave when he gets home. He picks up a butcher knife and explains everything to his wife. When the twins come down, he sees a baby alien fly come toward him. Ed kills the alien, abandons his dazed wife and child, and flees. He runs ten miles towards Oak Grove. He explains everything to the Commissioner. The Commissioner records and agrees with his saying. Ed talks about his theory of the alien, but he cannot figure out the purpose of the hanged body. Finally, the Commissioner tells him that it is bait to lure people like him who escape successfully. Ed is frightened and realizes that he will be hanged in Oak Grove, just like the hanged body in Pikeville. That evening, Clarence Mason, the vice president of the Oak Grove Merchant’s Bank, sees a hanging object under the telephone pole in front of the police station.\n",
"The story follows a regular man named Ed. The story follows Ed as he goes from his house to a shop that he owns. On his way there, he sees a dead body hanging from a tree in the town square. When he tells his coworkers, no one seems to understand the true implications of the hanging body, and Ed is the only one that takes it seriously. Ed starts to ask his coworkers why they are taking the hanging body so well, and Ed ends up being arrested by the town’s police. In the police car, Ed tries to explain his reaction to the policemen. He realizes that they aren’t real policemen, as Ed already knew every policeman in the town. Ed manages to escape and tries to head back home. While running, he sees a swarm of large alien-like bugs. He learns that they can control humans and imitate their actions. After seeing this, he gets on a bus and realizes that almost everyone in the bus is being controlled by the bugs. He also sees 2 people that seem different. He escapes the bus and is followed by the 2 same men. He gets into a fight with them and ends up killing one of them with a rock, thinking that they were controlled by bugs. He runs to his house to get his family and escape the town, but when he gets there he realizes that they were already being controlled by the bugs. He kills one of his sons and escapes alone. He gets to another town where he tries to explain everything to a police officer, but the police officer seemed very calm after everything that Ed had said, and the same cycle continues when another man finds a hanging body again.",
"Ed Loyce goes to his TV store at five o’clock, and he is tired from digging dirt out of the basement. He stops his Packard at a red light while observing other people; the store has been open without him all day. There is no place to park in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE, but he does a shapeless dark bundle swinging a little from the wind. As he brings his car around, he realizes that it is a human body. Loyce tells his co-workers Don Fergusson and Jack Potter about the body, but they seem untroubled about it. Nobody pays attention to the body, and Loyce feels sick. He bumps into Jenkins and Margaret Henderson, both who assume that he is sick because of his reactions. Two cops show up, and they tell him that he missed the announcement earlier today. As he gets into the police car, he realizes that they weren’t cops in Pikeville. Loyce manages to get away, stopping at the entrance of an alley. He heads towards the City Hall and sees fluttering shapes from the sky. The shapes are similar to giant insects with wings, and he wonders if there are more. Loyce realizes that they are aliens with the ability to change into man, and he boards a bus to get out of the area. Everyone seems fairly normal, but he notices a man watching him with shrewd eyes. He rushes out of the bus, and the man follows him. Loyce strikes the man with a rock and runs away as other people begin to gather. Janet asks what is happening when he returns him, and he tells her that the entire town is under control of the aliens now. The twins are called down, as Loyce tells him that they are going on a ride. Suddenly, there is a buzz and one of the aliens that bears a resemblance to Jimmy hurls itself at him. Loyce stabs it, realizing that his wife and other son are also controlled because of how expressionless they are. Eventually, he reaches Oak Grove and talks to the Commissioner. The Commissioner explains that he thinks this has been going on for a long time, and Loyce thinks about the man he accidentally killed. It turns out that the dead man was bait to draw out who had escaped, and the Commissioner tells him to come along as there is no time to waste. The last thing Loyce sees is a telephone pole and a rope on the street in front of the police station. The story then cuts to Clarence Mason preparing to go home after a long day working in the vaults. However, he notices a shapeless thing that looks like an ominous bundle hanging. He finds it strange that nobody else has noticed it. ",
"Ed Loyce is the owner of a TV sales store. After a day of digging in his basement, he decided to drive to his store in the evening. While searching for a parking spot, he notices some bundle hanging from a lamppost in a town park, not far from his store. Moments later, he realizes it’s a human body. Loyce is shocked and starts asking his salesman Don Fergusson about the body but gets an indefinite answer. Jack Potter, a shoe shop’s employee, also calmly states that there has to be some valid reason behind it. Don goes back to work, surprisingly unbothered. Ed walks to the park to look at the dead man: not a local, his skin is cut gouged. Ed then meets a clerk named Jenkins, who asks why Ed looks sick. Loyce becomes hysterical, and people start gathering around him, wondering why someone is screaming. Two cops detain him and decide to drive Ed to the Hall of Justice. They start asking questions: his name, where he was during the day. Ed knows they are not real policemen - he knows all the cops of Pikeville - and eventually jumps out of the car when it slows down. He runs away and then sees a splotch of darkness above the City Hall and some alien figures coming through this slit. They can disguise themselves as men. He gets on the bus and inspects the other passengers - they seem to be under the influence of the alien creatures. Two men look at Ed with suspicion, and he quickly gets off the bus. He kills one of them with a rock while running away. Ed comes home and orders his wife and kids to get ready to leave the town immediately. His younger son seems to be under the control of a small alien. Ed stabs the creature, killing it. His wife and the other son are not reacting - they are subservient to the aliens, too. Ed runs away alone. He gets to a patrol station after crawling and limping for ten miles. The station’s attendant hears Ed’s story and looks confused. Loyce asks the man to get him to Oak Grove. Later, he tells his story to the Commissioner of Oak Grove, the officer believes him. Ed suggests that these creatures have been inhabiting the planet’s towns for a long time. He thinks the Jewish people defeated them and showed it in the Bible, illustrating Beelzebub as a giant fly, an alien insect. The Commissioner then explains that the dead body probably served as bait for people who were not yet under the aliens’ control. He asks Loyce to come with him somewhere. In the next scene, the vice president of the Oak Grove Merchants’ Bank leaves work after spending the day in the vault, examining deposit boxes. He suddenly sees a dark bundle hanging in front of the police station. \n"
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41562
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THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
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What are the alien flies, and what are their characteristics?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick.
Relevant chunks:
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
Question:
What are the alien flies, and what are their characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"The alien flies have multi-lensed inhuman eyes, wings, and a stinger. They are dark, coming from another dimension. They look like giant insects in their original form. When they move, they will produce a buzzing sound. They can mimic the appearance of humans, and they can control human minds. However, their mind control ability has its limit that they can control one area at one time, starting from the highest authority and widening down the control in a circle. When they control the whole town, they move to another area to continue. Their power flaw makes them unable to control everyone that someone may be overlooked. When that is the case, they set up a trap, using people who escape from the controlled town as bait to hang them in public, to lure people who are not under control to come to them by themselves. They anticipate their failures and are smart enough to make up for their flaws.",
"The alien flies are the creatures that invaded Ed’s town and started to control everyone. They entered the town above town hall through a portal-like chasm in swarms. They were described as large bugs, with human characteristics. They could easily imitate humans, which is why it was hard at first for Ed to distinguish who was who. They are described as violent and fearless, but they weren’t omnipotent. They made mistakes when controlling people, which is what allowed Ed to initially be free of their control. ",
"The alien flies are a strange type of species that have come in hopes of controlling the entire town. The Commissioner says that he has a theory of who they are. Most of the alien flies try to take over one area at a time, starting from the highest level and working down to widen the circle. Eventually, they move to a different town once the one they are currently controlling is firmly in their grasp. This has also been happening for thousands of years. Physically, they are giant insects with wings, capable of blending in as pseudo-men. When the one that resembles Jimmy attacks Loyce, he notes that it has wings and cold in-human eyes. There is also a stinger when it turns its body. The alien flies are dedicated to carrying out their mission of controlling the entire town. They do not have any personal emotions, but they are willing to get rid of any obstacle that stands in their way. The flies are very intelligent too, capable of mimicking humans almost perfectly and using bait to draw out the escaped ones. ",
"The alien flies are some unknown creatures that came to Pikeville through a slit in the shell of the universe and occupied the town’s citizens’ minds and bodies. They have been doing this for thousands of years - Ed remembered their image was in the Bible. They are smart and can disguise themselves as humans. They also can anticipate their own mistakes and create certain mechanisms to locate people whose minds they haven’t yet invaded. For example, they hang dead bodies in the central part of a town. This image can disturb only ones who are not aware of the aliens. \n\n"
] |
41562
|
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
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Who is Edward C. Loyce, and what are his characteristics?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick.
Relevant chunks:
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
Question:
Who is Edward C. Loyce, and what are his characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"Edward C. Loyce has been the owner of the TV sales store in the town for twenty-five years, and he is also called Ed by the town people. He is forty years old, living at 1368 Hurst Road, Pikeville. He has a wife, Janet, and twin sons, Jimmy and Tommy. He owns a Packard. He is practical and always tries to correct wrong things. He is friendly because he knows everyone in the town, and everyone seems to have a good relationship with him. Ed is brave because when he realizes that nobody pays attention to the hanged body in the town park, he gets closer and tries to figure out who the corpse is. Ed is also brilliant because he grasps the abnormal situations immediately after noticing the difference between the current situation and the normal one and because he sees the alien’s power flaws right after knowing the situation. He is also practical because he plans what he should do right after grasping the situation in the town. He is cautious as he kills the man with the book on the bus, not letting the aliens' slight chance get him. His will is formidable because he runs with his feet for ten miles along the rough ground to escape from Pikeville and because he makes the decision immediately when he knows that he has to abandon his family.",
"Edward C. Loyce is a man who lives in a small town, and is the owner of a TV sales store. He seems to be very intelligent, determined and can handle himself in a fight. Once Ed is put in a situation in which he is in danger, he immediately starts to think about what he can do to survive. He did this in the police car, in the bus and in his house when he had to kill one of his children. He is also described as a practical man. ",
"Edward C. Loyce is the owner of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICES. He is married to his wife Janet; he also has two twin sons named Jimmy and Tommy. Loyce is described to be a forty year old man. He is also a very brave person, being unafraid to stab the alien that hurled itself at him even when it bore a vague resemblance to his son. He also chose to act quickly after seeing the aliens go to the City Hall. Loyce is also very perceptive as well, realizing that the two cops weren’t actually cops because he knew every cop in Pikeville. Even though he is very perceptive, it can cause him to become overly-paranoid as he accidentally killed one of the other men who escaped the alien control because he suspected that the man was one of the aliens. He is shown to love his family very much, choosing to go back for them in hopes that the whole town is not completely controlled yet",
"Edward C. Loyce is a forty-year-old citizen of Pikeville. He owns Loyce TV sales and service store. At the beginning, we learn that he is a practical person. He is friendly and approachable, many people know him and his store, and he’s also met every police officer in the town. He is terrified by death and instantly starts looking for something that could explain a dead body hanging from a lamppost. He’s also quite shrewd and good at pretending. We see that, when he manages to deceive two cops and escape after he realizes that they are not real police officers. He also shows his intellect when sharing his assumption regarding the creatures and referencing the biblical image. He cares for his family and tries to take them with him, to hide them from the alien creatures but is then forced to leave them. \n"
] |
41562
|
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
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What is the setting of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick.
Relevant chunks:
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
Question:
What is the setting of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story happens in Pikeville town and Oak Grove town. The first scene occurs in the town park where the hanged body is. In the park, there is a lamppost, a drinking fountain, and a bench. Under the lamppost, the body is hanged. The second scene is in the car, where Ed has a conversation with the fake police. When Ed escapes from the fake police, he runs into a hardware store filled with customers and clerks. There is a back door in the shipping room, a garbage can next to the door, and concrete stairs outside the store towards the top of the fence. The other side of the fence is an entrance to an alley, which is filled with boards and ruined boxes and tires. Passing the loading platform of a grocery store stands one wall of the Hall of Justice. The wall is white with barred windows. The City Hall is next to the police station, with yellow wooden walls with brass cement steps. Cedars and flowers are planted on each side of the entrance. \n\nWhen Ed gets on the bus, the people sitting around him are all dull, tired, and quiet. No one pays attention to him. People seem to be normal: one is reading the newspaper, another with business suits sits quietly, and the other gazes absently towards the front. When Ed escapes from the bus, he runs into a residential district, pavement sides with tall apartment buildings and lawns. \n\nWhen Ed comes home, there are windows with shades in the living room. The house is a two-floor building. The twin’s room is upstairs. There is a basement in the house. In the kitchen, a butcher knife lies in the drawer under the sink. On his way to Oak Grove, rough ground, gullies, open fields, and forest are along the way. \n\nIn Oak Grove, there is a gasoline station and drive-in. Several trucks park there—some chickens on the field and a dog tied with the string. In front of the police station in Oak Grove, a telephone pole is suitable to hang a human body.\n",
"The story is set in a small town named Pikeville. The town is described as very small, composed of a town center with a square. The town’s town hall is where the aliens’ portal was, so it was covered by a swarm of them. The town also has different streets and highways, which Ed needs to take in order to leave the town. He ended up crawling out of the town because he didn’t want to be seen, and he ended up hurt and scratched because the town had a lot of shrubbery and plants. ",
"The story is first set in Pikeville, where Ed has spent the day digging dirt out of his basement and wheeling it into the backyard. His television store is also located in the town, where there are many other commuters. There is a little square of green in the center of the street that serves as the town park. The park also has a lonely drinking fountain, bench, and single lamppost. The dead body hangs from this lamppost. The town also has a Hall of Justice, City Hall, and police station. The Hall of Justice has barred windows and a police antenna. The City Hall, however, is an old-fashioned yellow structure of good, gilded brass, and cement steps. There are also buses that take commuters back home after the day. Loyce’s home has a living room, upstairs, kitchen, and basement. Later, the scene changes to Oak Grove, where there are farm fields, stations, and even a police station. It is also home to the Oak Grove Merchants’ Bank, where Clarence Mason spends the day working in the vaults.",
"The majority of the story happens in Pikeville. At five o’clock, Ed drives from his house to his TV store across town. It’s getting dark. He passes a small park where he notices the hanging body. Later, he is taken by two officers, and they are driving towards the City Hall. It’s already gloomy outside - the sun has set. After escaping, he runs through a hardware store, climbs over a fence, and moves down a street alley. He can see the City Hall’s roof. Then, he gets on a bus but soon runs away from the two suspicious passengers. He comes home and realizes that his family is under the influence of the alien flies. He crawls for ten miles, walks by a farm, and reaches a gasoline station, a couple of trucks parked near it. After that, he ends up at the police station of Oak Grove, the town near Pikeville. At the end, we meet another character who is leaving the Oak Grove Merchants’ Bank."
] |
41562
|
THE HANGING STRANGER
BY PHILIP K. DICK
ILLUSTRATED BY SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Adventures Magazine December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ed had always been a practical man, when he saw something was wrong he tried to correct it. Then one day he saw
it
hanging in the town square.
Five o'clock Ed Loyce washed up, tossed on his hat and coat, got his car out and headed across town toward his TV sales store. He was tired. His back and shoulders ached from digging dirt out of the basement and wheeling it into the back yard. But for a forty-year-old man he had done okay. Janet could get a new vase with the money he had saved; and he liked the idea of repairing the foundations himself!
It was getting dark. The setting sun cast long rays over the scurrying commuters, tired and grim-faced, women loaded down with bundles and packages, students swarming home from the university, mixing with clerks and businessmen and drab secretaries. He stopped his Packard for a red light and then started it up again. The store had been open without him; he'd arrive just in time to spell the help for dinner, go over the records of the day, maybe even close a couple of sales himself. He drove slowly past the small square of green in the center of the street, the town park. There were no parking places in front of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. He cursed under his breath and swung the car in a U-turn. Again he passed the little square of green with its lonely drinking fountain and bench and single lamppost.
From the lamppost something was hanging. A shapeless dark bundle, swinging a little with the wind. Like a dummy of some sort. Loyce rolled down his window and peered out. What the hell was it? A display of some kind? Sometimes the Chamber of Commerce put up displays in the square.
Again he made a U-turn and brought his car around. He passed the park and concentrated on the dark bundle. It wasn't a dummy. And if it was a display it was a strange kind. The hackles on his neck rose and he swallowed uneasily. Sweat slid out on his face and hands.
It was a body. A human body.
"Look at it!" Loyce snapped. "Come on out here!"
Don Fergusson came slowly out of the store, buttoning his pin-stripe coat with dignity. "This is a big deal, Ed. I can't just leave the guy standing there."
"See it?" Ed pointed into the gathering gloom. The lamppost jutted up against the sky—the post and the bundle swinging from it. "There it is. How the hell long has it been there?" His voice rose excitedly. "What's wrong with everybody? They just walk on past!"
Don Fergusson lit a cigarette slowly. "Take it easy, old man. There must be a good reason, or it wouldn't be there."
"A reason! What kind of a reason?"
Fergusson shrugged. "Like the time the Traffic Safety Council put that wrecked Buick there. Some sort of civic thing. How would I know?"
Jack Potter from the shoe shop joined them. "What's up, boys?"
"There's a body hanging from the lamppost," Loyce said. "I'm going to call the cops."
"They must know about it," Potter said. "Or otherwise it wouldn't be there."
"I got to get back in." Fergusson headed back into the store. "Business before pleasure."
Loyce began to get hysterical. "You see it? You see it hanging there? A man's body! A dead man!"
"Sure, Ed. I saw it this afternoon when I went out for coffee."
"You mean it's been there all afternoon?"
"Sure. What's the matter?" Potter glanced at his watch. "Have to run. See you later, Ed."
Potter hurried off, joining the flow of people moving along the sidewalk. Men and women, passing by the park. A few glanced up curiously at the dark bundle—and then went on. Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention.
"I'm going nuts," Loyce whispered. He made his way to the curb and crossed out into traffic, among the cars. Horns honked angrily at him. He gained the curb and stepped up onto the little square of green.
The man had been middle-aged. His clothing was ripped and torn, a gray suit, splashed and caked with dried mud. A stranger. Loyce had never seen him before. Not a local man. His face was partly turned, away, and in the evening wind he spun a little, turning gently, silently. His skin was gouged and cut. Red gashes, deep scratches of congealed blood. A pair of steel-rimmed glasses hung from one ear, dangling foolishly. His eyes bulged. His mouth was open, tongue thick and ugly blue.
"For Heaven's sake," Loyce muttered, sickened. He pushed down his nausea and made his way back to the sidewalk. He was shaking all over, with revulsion—and fear.
Why? Who was the man? Why was he hanging there? What did it mean?
And—why didn't anybody notice?
He bumped into a small man hurrying along the sidewalk. "Watch it!" the man grated, "Oh, it's you, Ed."
Ed nodded dazedly. "Hello, Jenkins."
"What's the matter?" The stationery clerk caught Ed's arm. "You look sick."
"The body. There in the park."
"Sure, Ed." Jenkins led him into the alcove of LOYCE TV SALES AND SERVICE. "Take it easy."
Margaret Henderson from the jewelry store joined them. "Something wrong?"
"Ed's not feeling well."
Loyce yanked himself free. "How can you stand here? Don't you see it? For God's sake—"
"What's he talking about?" Margaret asked nervously.
"The body!" Ed shouted. "The body hanging there!"
More people collected. "Is he sick? It's Ed Loyce. You okay, Ed?"
"The body!" Loyce screamed, struggling to get past them. Hands caught at him. He tore loose. "Let me go! The police! Get the police!"
"Ed—"
"Better get a doctor!"
"He must be sick."
"Or drunk."
Loyce fought his way through the people. He stumbled and half fell. Through a blur he saw rows of faces, curious, concerned, anxious. Men and women halting to see what the disturbance was. He fought past them toward his store. He could see Fergusson inside talking to a man, showing him an Emerson TV set. Pete Foley in the back at the service counter, setting up a new Philco. Loyce shouted at them frantically. His voice was lost in the roar of traffic and the murmur around him.
"Do something!" he screamed. "Don't stand there! Do something! Something's wrong! Something's happened! Things are going on!"
The crowd melted respectfully for the two heavy-set cops moving efficiently toward Loyce.
"Name?" the cop with the notebook murmured.
"Loyce." He mopped his forehead wearily. "Edward C. Loyce. Listen to me. Back there—"
"Address?" the cop demanded. The police car moved swiftly through traffic, shooting among the cars and buses. Loyce sagged against the seat, exhausted and confused. He took a deep shuddering breath.
"1368 Hurst Road."
"That's here in Pikeville?"
"That's right." Loyce pulled himself up with a violent effort. "Listen to me. Back there. In the square. Hanging from the lamppost—"
"Where were you today?" the cop behind the wheel demanded.
"Where?" Loyce echoed.
"You weren't in your shop, were you?"
"No." He shook his head. "No, I was home. Down in the basement."
"In the basement ?"
"Digging. A new foundation. Getting out the dirt to pour a cement frame. Why? What has that to do with—"
"Was anybody else down there with you?"
"No. My wife was downtown. My kids were at school." Loyce looked from one heavy-set cop to the other. Hope flicked across his face, wild hope.
"You mean because I was down there I missed—the explanation? I didn't get in on it? Like everybody else?"
After a pause the cop with the notebook said: "That's right. You missed the explanation."
"Then it's official? The body—it's supposed to be hanging there?"
"It's supposed to be hanging there. For everybody to see."
Ed Loyce grinned weakly. "Good Lord. I guess I sort of went off the deep end. I thought maybe something had happened. You know, something like the Ku Klux Klan. Some kind of violence. Communists or Fascists taking over." He wiped his face with his breast-pocket handkerchief, his hands shaking. "I'm glad to know it's on the level."
"It's on the level." The police car was getting near the Hall of Justice. The sun had set. The streets were gloomy and dark. The lights had not yet come on.
"I feel better," Loyce said. "I was pretty excited there, for a minute. I guess I got all stirred up. Now that I understand, there's no need to take me in, is there?"
The two cops said nothing.
"I should be back at my store. The boys haven't had dinner. I'm all right, now. No more trouble. Is there any need of—"
"This won't take long," the cop behind the wheel interrupted. "A short process. Only a few minutes."
"I hope it's short," Loyce muttered. The car slowed down for a stoplight. "I guess I sort of disturbed the peace. Funny, getting excited like that and—"
Loyce yanked the door open. He sprawled out into the street and rolled to his feet. Cars were moving all around him, gaining speed as the light changed. Loyce leaped onto the curb and raced among the people, burrowing into the swarming crowds. Behind him he heard sounds, shouts, people running.
They weren't cops. He had realized that right away. He knew every cop in Pikeville. A man couldn't own a store, operate a business in a small town for twenty-five years without getting to know all the cops.
They weren't cops—and there hadn't been any explanation. Potter, Fergusson, Jenkins, none of them knew why it was there. They didn't know—and they didn't care. That was the strange part.
Loyce ducked into a hardware store. He raced toward the back, past the startled clerks and customers, into the shipping room and through the back door. He tripped over a garbage can and ran up a flight of concrete steps. He climbed over a fence and jumped down on the other side, gasping and panting.
There was no sound behind him. He had got away.
He was at the entrance of an alley, dark and strewn with boards and ruined boxes and tires. He could see the street at the far end. A street light wavered and came on. Men and women. Stores. Neon signs. Cars.
And to his right—the police station.
He was close, terribly close. Past the loading platform of a grocery store rose the white concrete side of the Hall of Justice. Barred windows. The police antenna. A great concrete wall rising up in the darkness. A bad place for him to be near. He was too close. He had to keep moving, get farther away from them.
Them?
Loyce moved cautiously down the alley. Beyond the police station was the City Hall, the old-fashioned yellow structure of wood and gilded brass and broad cement steps. He could see the endless rows of offices, dark windows, the cedars and beds of flowers on each side of the entrance.
And—something else.
Above the City Hall was a patch of darkness, a cone of gloom denser than the surrounding night. A prism of black that spread out and was lost into the sky.
He listened. Good God, he could hear something. Something that made him struggle frantically to close his ears, his mind, to shut out the sound. A buzzing. A distant, muted hum like a great swarm of bees.
Loyce gazed up, rigid with horror. The splotch of darkness, hanging over the City Hall. Darkness so thick it seemed almost solid. In the vortex something moved. Flickering shapes. Things, descending from the sky, pausing momentarily above the City Hall, fluttering over it in a dense swarm and then dropping silently onto the roof.
Shapes. Fluttering shapes from the sky. From the crack of darkness that hung above him.
He was seeing—them.
For a long time Loyce watched, crouched behind a sagging fence in a pool of scummy water.
They were landing. Coming down in groups, landing on the roof of the City Hall and disappearing inside. They had wings. Like giant insects of some kind. They flew and fluttered and came to rest—and then crawled crab-fashion, sideways, across the roof and into the building.
He was sickened. And fascinated. Cold night wind blew around him and he shuddered. He was tired, dazed with shock. On the front steps of the City Hall were men, standing here and there. Groups of men coming out of the building and halting for a moment before going on.
Were there more of them?
It didn't seem possible. What he saw descending from the black chasm weren't men. They were alien—from some other world, some other dimension. Sliding through this slit, this break in the shell of the universe. Entering through this gap, winged insects from another realm of being.
On the steps of the City Hall a group of men broke up. A few moved toward a waiting car. One of the remaining shapes started to re-enter the City Hall. It changed its mind and turned to follow the others.
Loyce closed his eyes in horror. His senses reeled. He hung on tight, clutching at the sagging fence. The shape, the man-shape, had abruptly fluttered up and flapped after the others. It flew to the sidewalk and came to rest among them.
Pseudo-men. Imitation men. Insects with ability to disguise themselves as men. Like other insects familiar to Earth. Protective coloration. Mimicry.
Loyce pulled himself away. He got slowly to his feet. It was night. The alley was totally dark. But maybe they could see in the dark. Maybe darkness made no difference to them.
He left the alley cautiously and moved out onto the street. Men and women flowed past, but not so many, now. At the bus-stops stood waiting groups. A huge bus lumbered along the street, its lights flashing in the evening gloom.
Loyce moved forward. He pushed his way among those waiting and when the bus halted he boarded it and took a seat in the rear, by the door. A moment later the bus moved into life and rumbled down the street.
Loyce relaxed a little. He studied the people around him. Dulled, tired faces. People going home from work. Quite ordinary faces. None of them paid any attention to him. All sat quietly, sunk down in their seats, jiggling with the motion of the bus.
The man sitting next to him unfolded a newspaper. He began to read the sports section, his lips moving. An ordinary man. Blue suit. Tie. A businessman, or a salesman. On his way home to his wife and family.
Across the aisle a young woman, perhaps twenty. Dark eyes and hair, a package on her lap. Nylons and heels. Red coat and white angora sweater. Gazing absently ahead of her.
A high school boy in jeans and black jacket.
A great triple-chinned woman with an immense shopping bag loaded with packages and parcels. Her thick face dim with weariness.
Ordinary people. The kind that rode the bus every evening. Going home to their families. To dinner.
Going home—with their minds dead. Controlled, filmed over with the mask of an alien being that had appeared and taken possession of them, their town, their lives. Himself, too. Except that he happened to be deep in his cellar instead of in the store. Somehow, he had been overlooked. They had missed him. Their control wasn't perfect, foolproof.
Maybe there were others.
Hope flickered in Loyce. They weren't omnipotent. They had made a mistake, not got control of him. Their net, their field of control, had passed over him. He had emerged from his cellar as he had gone down. Apparently their power-zone was limited.
A few seats down the aisle a man was watching him. Loyce broke off his chain of thought. A slender man, with dark hair and a small mustache. Well-dressed, brown suit and shiny shoes. A book between his small hands. He was watching Loyce, studying him intently. He turned quickly away.
Loyce tensed. One of them ? Or—another they had missed?
The man was watching him again. Small dark eyes, alive and clever. Shrewd. A man too shrewd for them—or one of the things itself, an alien insect from beyond.
The bus halted. An elderly man got on slowly and dropped his token into the box. He moved down the aisle and took a seat opposite Loyce.
The elderly man caught the sharp-eyed man's gaze. For a split second something passed between them.
A look rich with meaning.
Loyce got to his feet. The bus was moving. He ran to the door. One step down into the well. He yanked the emergency door release. The rubber door swung open.
"Hey!" the driver shouted, jamming on the brakes. "What the hell—"
Loyce squirmed through. The bus was slowing down. Houses on all sides. A residential district, lawns and tall apartment buildings. Behind him, the bright-eyed man had leaped up. The elderly man was also on his feet. They were coming after him.
Loyce leaped. He hit the pavement with terrific force and rolled against the curb. Pain lapped over him. Pain and a vast tide of blackness. Desperately, he fought it off. He struggled to his knees and then slid down again. The bus had stopped. People were getting off.
Loyce groped around. His fingers closed over something. A rock, lying in the gutter. He crawled to his feet, grunting with pain. A shape loomed before him. A man, the bright-eyed man with the book.
Loyce kicked. The man gasped and fell. Loyce brought the rock down. The man screamed and tried to roll away. " Stop! For God's sake listen—"
He struck again. A hideous crunching sound. The man's voice cut off and dissolved in a bubbling wail. Loyce scrambled up and back. The others were there, now. All around him. He ran, awkwardly, down the sidewalk, up a driveway. None of them followed him. They had stopped and were bending over the inert body of the man with the book, the bright-eyed man who had come after him.
Had he made a mistake?
But it was too late to worry about that. He had to get out—away from them. Out of Pikeville, beyond the crack of darkness, the rent between their world and his.
"Ed!" Janet Loyce backed away nervously. "What is it? What—"
Ed Loyce slammed the door behind him and came into the living room.
"Pull down the shades. Quick."
Janet moved toward the window. "But—"
"Do as I say. Who else is here besides you?"
"Nobody. Just the twins. They're upstairs in their room. What's happened? You look so strange. Why are you home?"
Ed locked the front door. He prowled around the house, into the kitchen. From the drawer under the sink he slid out the big butcher knife and ran his finger along it. Sharp. Plenty sharp. He returned to the living room.
"Listen to me," he said. "I don't have much time. They know I escaped and they'll be looking for me."
"Escaped?" Janet's face twisted with bewilderment and fear. "Who?"
"The town has been taken over. They're in control. I've got it pretty well figured out. They started at the top, at the City Hall and police department. What they did with the real humans they—"
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been invaded. From some other universe, some other dimension. They're insects. Mimicry. And more. Power to control minds. Your mind."
"My mind?"
"Their entrance is here , in Pikeville. They've taken over all of you. The whole town—except me. We're up against an incredibly powerful enemy, but they have their limitations. That's our hope. They're limited! They can make mistakes!"
Janet shook her head. "I don't understand, Ed. You must be insane."
"Insane? No. Just lucky. If I hadn't been down in the basement I'd be like all the rest of you." Loyce peered out the window. "But I can't stand here talking. Get your coat."
"My coat?"
"We're getting out of here. Out of Pikeville. We've got to get help. Fight this thing. They can be beaten. They're not infallible. It's going to be close—but we may make it if we hurry. Come on!" He grabbed her arm roughly. "Get your coat and call the twins. We're all leaving. Don't stop to pack. There's no time for that."
White-faced, his wife moved toward the closet and got down her coat.
"Where are we going?"
Ed pulled open the desk drawer and spilled the contents out onto the floor. He grabbed up a road map and spread it open. "They'll have the highway covered, of course. But there's a back road. To Oak Grove. I got onto it once. It's practically abandoned. Maybe they'll forget about it."
"The old Ranch Road? Good Lord—it's completely closed. Nobody's supposed to drive over it."
"I know." Ed thrust the map grimly into his coat. "That's our best chance. Now call down the twins and let's get going. Your car is full of gas, isn't it?"
Janet was dazed.
"The Chevy? I had it filled up yesterday afternoon." Janet moved toward the stairs. "Ed, I—"
"Call the twins!" Ed unlocked the front door and peered out. Nothing stirred. No sign of life. All right so far.
"Come on downstairs," Janet called in a wavering voice. "We're—going out for awhile."
"Now?" Tommy's voice came.
"Hurry up," Ed barked. "Get down here, both of you."
Tommy appeared at the top of the stairs. "I was doing my home work. We're starting fractions. Miss Parker says if we don't get this done—"
"You can forget about fractions." Ed grabbed his son as he came down the stairs and propelled him toward the door. "Where's Jim?"
"He's coming."
Jim started slowly down the stairs. "What's up, Dad?"
"We're going for a ride."
"A ride? Where?"
Ed turned to Janet. "We'll leave the lights on. And the TV set. Go turn it on." He pushed her toward the set. "So they'll think we're still—"
He heard the buzz. And dropped instantly, the long butcher knife out. Sickened, he saw it coming down the stairs at him, wings a blur of motion as it aimed itself. It still bore a vague resemblance to Jimmy. It was small, a baby one. A brief glimpse—the thing hurtling at him, cold, multi-lensed inhuman eyes. Wings, body still clothed in yellow T-shirt and jeans, the mimic outline still stamped on it. A strange half-turn of its body as it reached him. What was it doing?
A stinger.
Loyce stabbed wildly at it. It retreated, buzzing frantically. Loyce rolled and crawled toward the door. Tommy and Janet stood still as statues, faces blank. Watching without expression. Loyce stabbed again. This time the knife connected. The thing shrieked and faltered. It bounced against the wall and fluttered down.
Something lapped through his mind. A wall of force, energy, an alien mind probing into him. He was suddenly paralyzed. The mind entered his own, touched against him briefly, shockingly. An utterly alien presence, settling over him—and then it flickered out as the thing collapsed in a broken heap on the rug.
It was dead. He turned it over with his foot. It was an insect, a fly of some kind. Yellow T-shirt, jeans. His son Jimmy.... He closed his mind tight. It was too late to think about that. Savagely he scooped up his knife and headed toward the door. Janet and Tommy stood stone-still, neither of them moving.
The car was out. He'd never get through. They'd be waiting for him. It was ten miles on foot. Ten long miles over rough ground, gulleys and open fields and hills of uncut forest. He'd have to go alone.
Loyce opened the door. For a brief second he looked back at his wife and son. Then he slammed the door behind him and raced down the porch steps.
A moment later he was on his way, hurrying swiftly through the darkness toward the edge of town.
The early morning sunlight was blinding. Loyce halted, gasping for breath, swaying back and forth. Sweat ran down in his eyes. His clothing was torn, shredded by the brush and thorns through which he had crawled. Ten miles—on his hands and knees. Crawling, creeping through the night. His shoes were mud-caked. He was scratched and limping, utterly exhausted.
But ahead of him lay Oak Grove.
He took a deep breath and started down the hill. Twice he stumbled and fell, picking himself up and trudging on. His ears rang. Everything receded and wavered. But he was there. He had got out, away from Pikeville.
A farmer in a field gaped at him. From a house a young woman watched in wonder. Loyce reached the road and turned onto it. Ahead of him was a gasoline station and a drive-in. A couple of trucks, some chickens pecking in the dirt, a dog tied with a string.
The white-clad attendant watched suspiciously as he dragged himself up to the station. "Thank God." He caught hold of the wall. "I didn't think I was going to make it. They followed me most of the way. I could hear them buzzing. Buzzing and flitting around behind me."
"What happened?" the attendant demanded. "You in a wreck? A hold-up?"
Loyce shook his head wearily. "They have the whole town. The City Hall and the police station. They hung a man from the lamppost. That was the first thing I saw. They've got all the roads blocked. I saw them hovering over the cars coming in. About four this morning I got beyond them. I knew it right away. I could feel them leave. And then the sun came up."
The attendant licked his lip nervously. "You're out of your head. I better get a doctor."
"Get me into Oak Grove," Loyce gasped. He sank down on the gravel.
"We've got to get started—cleaning them out. Got to get started right away."
They kept a tape recorder going all the time he talked. When he had finished the Commissioner snapped off the recorder and got to his feet. He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Finally he got out his cigarettes and lit up slowly, a frown on his beefy face.
"You don't believe me," Loyce said.
The Commissioner offered him a cigarette. Loyce pushed it impatiently away. "Suit yourself." The Commissioner moved over to the window and stood for a time looking out at the town of Oak Grove. "I believe you," he said abruptly.
Loyce sagged. "Thank God."
"So you got away." The Commissioner shook his head. "You were down in your cellar instead of at work. A freak chance. One in a million."
Loyce sipped some of the black coffee they had brought him. "I have a theory," he murmured.
"What is it?"
"About them. Who they are. They take over one area at a time. Starting at the top—the highest level of authority. Working down from there in a widening circle. When they're firmly in control they go on to the next town. They spread, slowly, very gradually. I think it's been going on for a long time."
"A long time?"
"Thousands of years. I don't think it's new."
"Why do you say that?"
"When I was a kid.... A picture they showed us in Bible League. A religious picture—an old print. The enemy gods, defeated by Jehovah. Moloch, Beelzebub, Moab, Baalin, Ashtaroth—"
"So?"
"They were all represented by figures." Loyce looked up at the Commissioner. "Beelzebub was represented as—a giant fly."
The Commissioner grunted. "An old struggle."
"They've been defeated. The Bible is an account of their defeats. They make gains—but finally they're defeated."
"Why defeated?"
"They can't get everyone. They didn't get me. And they never got the Hebrews. The Hebrews carried the message to the whole world. The realization of the danger. The two men on the bus. I think they understood. Had escaped, like I did." He clenched his fists. "I killed one of them. I made a mistake. I was afraid to take a chance."
The Commissioner nodded. "Yes, they undoubtedly had escaped, as you did. Freak accidents. But the rest of the town was firmly in control." He turned from the window. "Well, Mr. Loyce. You seem to have figured everything out."
"Not everything. The hanging man. The dead man hanging from the lamppost. I don't understand that. Why? Why did they deliberately hang him there?"
"That would seem simple." The Commissioner smiled faintly. " Bait. "
Loyce stiffened. His heart stopped beating. "Bait? What do you mean?"
"To draw you out. Make you declare yourself. So they'd know who was under control—and who had escaped."
Loyce recoiled with horror. "Then they expected failures! They anticipated—" He broke off. "They were ready with a trap."
"And you showed yourself. You reacted. You made yourself known." The Commissioner abruptly moved toward the door. "Come along, Loyce. There's a lot to do. We must get moving. There's no time to waste."
Loyce started slowly to his feet, numbed. "And the man. Who was the man? I never saw him before. He wasn't a local man. He was a stranger. All muddy and dirty, his face cut, slashed—"
There was a strange look on the Commissioner's face as he answered.
"Maybe," he said softly, "you'll understand that, too. Come along with me, Mr. Loyce." He held the door open, his eyes gleaming. Loyce caught a glimpse of the street in front of the police station. Policemen, a platform of some sort. A telephone pole—and a rope! "Right this way," the Commissioner said, smiling coldly.
As the sun set, the vice-president of the Oak Grove Merchants' Bank came up out of the vault, threw the heavy time locks, put on his hat and coat, and hurried outside onto the sidewalk. Only a few people were there, hurrying home to dinner.
"Good night," the guard said, locking the door after him.
"Good night," Clarence Mason murmured. He started along the street toward his car. He was tired. He had been working all day down in the vault, examining the lay-out of the safety deposit boxes to see if there was room for another tier. He was glad to be finished.
At the corner he halted. The street lights had not yet come on. The street was dim. Everything was vague. He looked around—and froze.
From the telephone pole in front of the police station, something large and shapeless hung. It moved a little with the wind.
What the hell was it?
Mason approached it warily. He wanted to get home. He was tired and hungry. He thought of his wife, his kids, a hot meal on the dinner table. But there was something about the dark bundle, something ominous and ugly. The light was bad; he couldn't tell what it was. Yet it drew him on, made him move closer for a better look. The shapeless thing made him uneasy. He was frightened by it. Frightened—and fascinated.
And the strange part was that nobody else seemed to notice it.
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What is the significance of the mountain?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Highest Mountain by Bryce Walton.
Relevant chunks:
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
Question:
What is the significance of the mountain?
Answer:
|
[
"The mountain is a sign of an impossible obstacle that the conquerors from Earth want to overcome, topple. Their urge to expand their territories and own the entire Solar System forces the Martians to come up with an illusion of something that can stop the destruction humans are spreading. The Martian mountain is a part of the hypnotic vision the conquered had access to, but they never saw the Martian city. They all ultimately died trying to climb it, from their drive to conquer everything they could find. The mountain is a perfect symbol of humans’ greed for territories and power, and it is also what stops them all from expanding their so-called empire. ",
"The mountain is significant because it is the ultimate challenge that the Martians laid out for the humans. Since they are aware of the Conquerors and horrors on Venus, the mountain is an illusion that was made to stop the humans and let only the good ones live. Helene explains that the people on Earth will get the opportunity to live on Mars too, but the terrible ones must be destroyed so that civilization can be preserved on Mars. Even though everybody wants to scale the mountain in hopes of finding some sort of new discovery or territory for the totalitarian Earth, the mountain serves as a trap that kills all of the ones who try to conquer it. The mountain is what also hides the Martian world away, only fading away when there is only one sane human from each crew left. ",
"The mountain, placed there intentionally by the Martians, acted as a test for the Conquerers. Most of the people coming from Earth had a will to conquer, and the Mountain served as a physical manifestation of this desire. It becomes evident throughout the climb that the Mountain continuously rises above the initial estimate, and yet humans overtaken by their desire to conquer this will continue to stride on. By doing so, they have failed the test. \n\nIt is significant because it demonstrates the supposedly innate and greedy determination of humans to be the Conquerer and be at the top - figuratively and literally. Even when a task seems improbable, a human's ego will feed this determination. This will to conquer that is fuelled without reason or morality. And it's only through this test that the Martians are able to identify which humans do not have this senseless will, that they are rewarded with the supposed oasis that the Conquers themselves desired to take over. ",
"The mountain symbolizes a challenge to be conquered. It plays a significant role in the story as every Earthmen coming from Earth with the will of conquest would climb the mountain. The mountain is very high that Earthmen can see it from the space and that Earthmen with the will of domination would want to climb to the top, which they will never succeed. Everyone who climbs the mountain will eventually die as it is a hypnotic-like phenomenon, which cannot be described in human language, created by Martians. Martians make this mountain because they know that Earthmen with the will of conquest cannot bear not to climb it since they enjoy the feeling of belittling others and the power of conquering, which is shown through their actions of killing anything or anyone in their ways even though those killed species may not have any intention to harm them. The story also plays a crucial role in distinguishing between people with the will to conquest and people who has no desire to conquer. Those who have no will to dominate will not climb the mountain, and they will be sent to the reality of Mars, where everything is adorable and peaceful. In the story, only four people out of five flights can get to the Martian reality, which again shows the significance of the mountain. Using the mountain phenomenon, Martian will be able to stop the Earthmen’s interplanetary conquest that Mars will be the furthest they can reach as they will keep climbing the mountain until they die."
] |
50868
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THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Highest Mountain by Bryce Walton.
Relevant chunks:
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story is set on Mars. A group of conquerors from Earth arrived here after the last four crews never returned after deciding to climb a very high Martian mountain. The fifth team with Bruce, Marsha - his past love interest, Anhauser, Jacobs, Doran, Max Drexel, Stromberg - the psychologist, and its captain Terrence arrived here on their ship Mars V eight months ago. A day before the ascent Bruce is reading Byron and thinking about his bizarre dreams. Then we see an inquest. With all the crew members listening, Terrence interrogates Bruce and asks why he shot Doran. Bruce reminds the crew about the genocide of the Venusian aborigines: five years ago, he and Doran were part of the crew of the first ship that landed on Venus; these explorers wiped out the entire Venusian community. Terrence claims that Bruce is mentally ill and doesn’t have the real conquering blood. The captain understands the young man doesn’t believe in the philosophy of conquering and remains faithful to the old ideas of democracy and freedom. Bruce then explains that Marsha and Doran woke him up after a bizarre dream, and he immediately saw something or someone in the window. When Doran saw the creature, he left the room, and Bruce heard his rifle go off. Infuriated, Bruce killed the man. \n\nStromberg deems Bruce a delusional schizophrenic and says that Doran probably imagined the creature, too. Instead of punishing the man by executing him, Terrence orders Bruce to write down everything they report via radio while they are climbing. He stays by the radio, eats what they left for him, and sometimes sleeps. Eventually, Terrence reports that the mountain is way higher than they anticipated - 45 00 feet. Later, he screams that he just killed Anhauser for dissent. The captain speaks of their great conquest, and Bruce sometimes replies to prove he's still writing down everything. His dreams become more realistic and he seems to see some crew members of the previous expeditions: Pietro, Marlene, and Helene. Terrence reports that they are at an altitude of five hundred thousand feet and later adds that Marsha is dying. She says she loves Bruce, and he recites a poem for her. Terrence later crazily speaks about toppling the Solar system but soon stops reporting. Bruce turns off the radio. The exterior of the ship changes - now he sees a small town and the grandiose mountain vanished. Not sure if it’s a dream or not, he approaches Helene, who eventually explains that the Martians wanted to stop the human conquerors. They decided to create an illusion of an infinitely high mountain, and the colonists felt an uncontrollable urge to climb it. They both walk to a red mound, where Bruce notices the bodies of the crew members of all five ships. Only people like him remained alive. Bruce looks at them and, together with Helene, leaves the mound, entering the city.",
"Bruce is reading some poetry he had sneaked upon the ship; he then dozes off but wakes himself to postpone one of his strangely realistic dreams. Jacob and Anhauser stand outside, surprised he did not run off somewhere. They have been on Mars for eight months, discovering other rockets that did not make it back. Everybody meets with Captain Terrence and Marsha Rennels, where they discuss Bruce killing Lieutenant Doran. Bruce tries to argue his way, but Terrence believes that he should never have been sent because of his bad mental state. Max Drexel considers him a crackpot idealist, but Bruce says that the first thing that the original travelers did to the Venusian village was destroy it completely. Bruce stops himself from arguing more because the New Era had only ushered final totalitarianism. Terrence asks him again why he shot Doran, and Bruce begins talking about the realistic dreams he has of the other crew members who never made it back to Earth. He continues to speak about the mountain, mentioning how everybody who has gone up has never come back down. Since their goal is not to conquer anything, Bruce feels no need to do it even if the destiny of Earth is absolute. When he is woken, he feels something looking at him; Doran also sees this too and grabs his rifle to go outside. Bruce is so overcome with rage about them killing aliens that he shoots him too. Stromberg, the psychologist, says that Bruce has schizophrenia, while Marsha also agrees that she did not see anything. Although the verdict should be execution for Bruce, they let him stay and take down radio reports when they go up the mountain. When the crew goes to climb, they begin documenting the experience for Bruce to list down. Bruce begins having more strange dreams, seeing a different martian landscape and meeting others. Terrence tells him that Marsha is dying, and he hears her call his name while telling him how much she loves him. Terrence continues his crazy yelling, and Bruce switches off the radio to see Helene smoking a cigarette. She explains how the Martians are masters of the mind and that the only people who survive are the ones who do not climb the mountain. The mountain is not real at all, as it is a product of the Martian’s psychic powers. They go to check on the corpses after, and Helene asks if he loved Marsha. He responds that he had once, but it is too late now. As they walk towards the calm city, he asks if the crew is still climbing somewhere. Helene responds that not even the Martians know about that. ",
"This story follows Bruce and his fellow cremates of the ship Mars V, as they explore Mars for potential life. Bruce is sat in front of his crew members, with Captain Terrence taking the lead, for an inquest. He has shot a fellow crew member, Lieutenant Doran, supposedly without provocation. He is set on trial for a mere formality - his fate of execution already decided - to determine his motivations behind the killing. Bruce proclaims that there are injustices aboard the crew. In particular, he disagrees with the crew and Earth's dogged desire to conquest, which Doran embodied wholeheartedly. \nBruce describes he saw a figure or a shadow out the window of their shelter that could've blurred between dream and reality. Doran had turned and saw it too, only to rush out and shoot at it, after which Bruce then killed him. It was then decided that because the rest of the crew were going to climb the mountain, instead of execution being Bruce's fate, he would remain back to record their notes over the radio. \n\nAs the crew went on their climb, Bruce sat back and drifted between sedative sleeping and dreams. The crew began to climb beyond the mountain's estimated peak of 45,000 feet. At 60,000 feet, Terrence reported that he killed Anhauser as he was dissenting, wanting to go back down the mountain. At 500,000 feet, Terrence comes back on the radio to report that Marsha is dying. Bruce and Marsha profess their love for each other as they reflect upon the past, before being interrupted by Terrence's proclamations of conquering the mountain and the universe. \n\nThroughout the story, Bruce has been having dreams of two girls and a man, set in a Mars landscape completely different to the one in reality. As Terrence's voice breaks off into undistinguishable yells, he looked out the shelter's window to find that the previously red and barren landscape had changed into the lush landscape of his dreams. He sees Helene - one of the girls - and she tells him what's been going on. It turns out that the Martians had purposefully imaged Mars to appear red and barren and set up the mountain as a test for the humans. They had found that humans had an undeterred desire for conquest that incorporated no values of morality or humane-ness. As a result, only those who didn't follow this blind conquest like Bruce, Helene, and the other girl and boy are rewarded by the true landscape of Mars which is plentiful, lush, and inhabitable. While listening to Helene, they reach the mountain. There lies the bodies of the previous crew members who climbed the mountain, including that of Marsha's. Respectfully carrying her body to place beside the canal, Helene asked if he loved her to which Bruce replied that he did once, and that she was young enough where her mind was influenced by the other's will to conquest.",
"The fifth rocket, Mars V, hits Mars, and its crewmembers see the four rockets lying under the shadow of the highest mountain they have ever seen. Bruce is reading poems while waiting for the trial. Jacob and Anhauser, Bruce’s crewmates, are surprised that Bruce did not run away from the execution, which is the night before all the crew members, except for Bruce, start to climb the mountain. In the trial, Bruce tries to explain the injustice done on Venus five years ago, when he and Doran went on the same mission, witnessing the brutality of Earthmen’s conquest of wiping out the Venusian village without communication. But he soon realizes that it is futile as Terrence, the captain, and other crewmembers insist on the importance of the conquered strength and the twisted democracy. Asked for the reason for killing Doram, Bruce explains his dream, which seems to indicate there are lives on Mars, to them. In the dream, Bruce describes how Doran runs out to shoot the shadowy things in the mist as the Earthmen always do based on the philosophy of conquest. Bruce killed Doran, wanting to kill all of his crew members, and they think he is a psycho. They finally decide to leave Bruce with food concentrates and the work of recording while they climb the mountain. They start to climb the mountain while Bruce reads poems, sleeps, and dreams of a magnificent place. Along with the climbing, Terrence keeps reporting his feeling of conquest and power. He also kills Anhauser because he refuses to keep climbing. Meanwhile, as Bruce stops using sedatives and continues dreaming, the boundary between dream and reality becomes blurred. Three people seem to come from the previous rockets in Bruce's dream. Scenes in a dream are warm and wonderful. Marsha dies along with the climbing after confessing to Bruce. Terrence dies. When Bruce switches off the radio, the scenery outside the window changes; it fuses with his dream. A woman comes to him, explaining that the dream is reality while the reality with the mountain is fake. Martians created the phenomenon of barren land and the mountain as they wanted to stop Earth’s conquest of the universe. With the mountain, Earthmen with the will to conquer will climb the mountain and die, and Earthmen who do not climb the mountain will live on Mars. The people in the dream he saw are all the crewmember of previous rockets who refuse to climb the mountain. Therefore, Earthmen will stop their conquest of Mars. After knowing the truth and seeing the corpses of other crew members, Bruce moves Marsha’s corpse along the canals and leaves with the woman."
] |
50868
|
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
|
Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Highest Mountain by Bryce Walton.
Relevant chunks:
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"At the beginning, Jacobs, Bruce, and Anhauser talk aboard their ship Mars V which recently landed on the windy surface of Mars. Bruce then looks at the even Martian landscape with an incredible mountain right near the ship and the double moons illuminating the surface. When everybody else leaves to climb the mountain, he spends his time on the spaceship, eating, sleeping, and sitting by the radio. Bruce dreams of a green valley and canals inside a town. And later, when the crew stops reporting anything, he finally can see the real landscape of Mars. He looks at numerous low hills with purple mist, a canal, and valleys with green trees. The mountain disappeared. A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, there is an ugly red mound with the bodies of the conquerors lying there. After looking at Marsha and Terrence, together with Helene, he walks along the canal back to the city. \n",
"The story is set on Mars; it is originally shown as a dead planet with nothing but smooth, red hills caused by erosion. However, there is a mountain too that is around 45,000 feet. Mars also has double moons and is extremely cold. On Mars, there are also five ships from the Conquerors in their attempts to try and take total control of Mars. When Bruce has his dreams, the martian landscape changes to one of green valleys and rivers. There are wide canals, odd trees trailing their branches on the gliding rivers. There is also a pastel–colored city that seems completely different from the Mars that the crew arrived to conquer. Later, it is revealed that this landscape is actually real because the fake Mars was just an illusion that the Martians set up using their powers to mess with the mind. The mountain does not exist either, having served its purpose of eliminating each group of Conquerors. ",
"This story is set on Mars. However, the Mars that the Conquerers see and the real Mars is different. \n\nThe Mars that the crew initially see lifeless, barren and has a flat landscape with only a mountain estimated at 45,000 feet standing out. There are four rockets - prior attempts at conquering Mars - lay side by side the mountain. \n\nThe real Mars that is revealed to Bruce is vastly different. It had lush green valleys and rivers and wide canals with slow currents. There were inhabited cities that are pastel-colored and overall, the atmosphere was soft, vibrant and lovely. Beyond the canal, the red mountain still stands. By the red mountain, the remains of the bodies of the crew of the first four ships lie as skeletons. The dead bodies of Bruce's crewmates also lie there - all still tied together by the rope. ",
"The story happens on Mars. There are two moons on Mars. There is a tremendously high mountain where the top seems nowhere to be seen, and the four rockets sent before the fifth rock lie in its shadow. The landscape on Mars is smoothed with red eroded hills, except for the mountain, which is unexpected in height and points toward Earth. In Bruce’s dream, which turns out to be the real Mars, the landscape on Mars is totally different. There are green valleys, wide canals, trees, and cities decorated with flowers. Behind the shelter, five rockets lie beside it. There is no mountain in the dream, only a high mound of the red hill with corpses lying on it."
] |
50868
|
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
|
What is the relationship between Bruce and Marsha?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Highest Mountain by Bryce Walton.
Relevant chunks:
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
Question:
What is the relationship between Bruce and Marsha?
Answer:
|
[
"Bruce and Marsha were close years ago when they lived on Earth. They shared similar values and loved each other, but eventually, Marsha became one of the conquerors, ready to expand the human territories. Now she’s almost emotionless. Bruce is disappointed and reckons that the other conquerors had gotten her young, and there was nothing he could do about it. When he’s interrogated, the psychologist asks if she saw any creature before Bruce shot Doran. She seems hesitant and doesn’t look at Bruce when denying seeing anything. When she is dying, she crazily laughs and admits that she is in love with him, asking Bruce to read her a poem. At the end, he finds Marsha’s body among the eroded hills and puts it beside the city canal. He says that he loved her once, and she could’ve been sane, different if the conquerors hadn’t got her when she was so young. \n",
"Bruce and Marsha do not interact much initially. Marsha is a witness of when Bruce shot Doran, but she makes no move to oppose the other members of the crew. She also hesitates to meet his eyes when she speaks, only following orders. Bruce mentions that they had gotten her when she was too young. Later, when Marsha is dying, she calls him darling and mentions how much she loves him. Even though she is hysterical, Bruce remembers the time when they used to talk about human values. He recites poetry to her and tries to think about the good times on Earth. Later, it is revealed that Bruce loved her before on Earth. However, it eventually meant nothing because she had been converted by the Conquerors too early and could not fight back. ",
"Bruce and Marsha appear to once have been romantic partners, with both proclaiming their love for each other. They used to share poetry and talk about human values and had a clear and affectionate connection back on Earth. \n\nHowever, Marsha and Bruce begin to distance as Marsha bought into the will to conquer, whereas Bruce leaned further away from this thought. This dissonance is apparent as she refuses to look at him during his inquest and at the fact that Marsha goes onto the climb. \n\nDespite this, when Marsha dies over the radio, they share a last moment of spoken affection. When Bruce sees her dead body, he takes care to rest her by the canal as he expresses his melancholy over \"they\" getting to her young. ",
"Bruce and Marsha used to be lovers years ago. Marsha is indifferent to Bruce when Bruce accepts his inquisition from other crewmembers for his murder. When Marsha is asked whether she saw anything when Bruce killed Doran, she says no, even though she might see it. According to Bruce, Marsha was reconditioned to accept the new values in New Era, where strength and conquest are prioritized as the most important thing, compared to Old Era, where mercy and compassion seem to exist. Marsha keeps calling Bruce’s name on the edge of death while climbing the mountain. She misses the warmth she used to have with Bruce, realizing that conquest is not everything. After she dies, Bruce places her corpse along the canals. Bruce and Marsha used to be in a romantic relationship, but after Marsha accepts the will to conquer, they become distant from each other. When Marsha is dying, Marsha finally regains herself and confesses to Bruce. Their relationship becomes tolerant and beloved."
] |
50868
|
THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
By BRYCE WALTON
Illustrated by BOB HAYES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
First one up this tallest summit in the Solar System was a rotten egg ... a very rotten egg!
Bruce heard their feet on the gravel outside and got up reluctantly to open the door for them. He'd been reading some of Byron's poems he'd sneaked aboard the ship; after that he had been on the point of dozing off, and now one of those strangely realistic dreams would have to be postponed for a while. Funny, those dreams. There were faces in them of human beings, or of ghosts, and other forms that weren't human at all, but seemed real and alive—except that they were also just parts of a last unconscious desire to escape death. Maybe that was it.
"'Oh that my young life were a lasting dream, my spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the 'morrow," Bruce said. He smiled without feeling much of anything and added, "Thanks, Mr. Poe."
Jacobs and Anhauser stood outside. The icy wind cut through and into Bruce, but he didn't seem to notice. Anhauser's bulk loomed even larger in the special cold-resisting suiting. Jacobs' thin face frowned slyly at Bruce.
"Come on in, boys, and get warm," Bruce invited.
"Hey, poet, you're still here!" Anhauser said, looking astonished.
"We thought you'd be running off somewhere," Jacobs said.
Bruce reached for the suit on its hook, started climbing into it.
"Where?" he asked. "Mars looks alike wherever you go. Where did you think I'd be running to?"
"Any place just so it was away from here and us," Anhauser said.
"I don't have to do that. You are going away from me. That takes care of that, doesn't it?"
"Ah, come on, get the hell out of there," Jacobs said. He pulled the revolver from its holster and pointed it at Bruce. "We got to get some sleep. We're starting up that mountain at five in the morning."
"I know," Bruce said. "I'll be glad to see you climb the mountain."
Outside, in the weird light of the double moons, Bruce looked up at the gigantic overhang of the mountain. It was unbelievable. The mountain didn't seem to belong here. He'd thought so when they'd first hit Mars eight months back and discovered the other four rockets that had never got back to Earth—all lying side by side under the mountain's shadow, like little white chalk marks on a tallyboard.
They'd estimated its height at over 45,000 feet, which was a lot higher than any mountain on Earth. Yet Mars was much older, geologically. The entire face of the planet was smoothed into soft, undulating red hills by erosion. And there in the middle of barren nothingness rose that one incredible mountain. On certain nights when the stars were right, it had seemed to Bruce as though it were pointing an accusing finger at Earth—or a warning one.
With Jacobs and Anhauser and the remainder of the crew of the ship, Mars V , seven judges sat in a semi-circle and Bruce stood there in front of them for the inquest.
In the middle of the half-moon of inquisition, with his long legs stretched out and his hands folded on his belly, sat Captain Terrence. His uniform was black. On his arm was the silver fist insignia of the Conqueror Corps. Marsha Rennels sat on the extreme right and now there was no emotion at all on her trim, neat face.
He remembered her as she had been years ago, but at the moment he wasn't looking very hard to see anything on her face. It was too late. They had gotten her young and it was too late.
Terrence's big, square face frowned a little. Bruce was aware suddenly of the sound of the bleak, never-ending wind against the plastilene shelter. He remembered the strange misty shapes that had come to him in his dreams, the voices that had called to him, and how disappointed he had been when he woke from them.
"This is a mere formality," Terrence finally said, "since we all know you killed Lieutenant Doran a few hours ago. Marsha saw you kill him. Whatever you say goes on the record, of course."
"For whom?" Bruce asked.
"What kind of question is that? For the authorities on Earth when we get back."
"When you get back? Like the crews of those other four ships out there?" Bruce laughed without much humor.
Terrence rubbed a palm across his lips, dropped the hand quickly again to his belly. "You want to make a statement or not? You shot Doran in the head with a rifle. No provocation for the attack. You've wasted enough of my time with your damn arguments and anti-social behavior. This is a democratic group. Everyone has his say. But you've said too much, and done too much. Freedom doesn't allow you to go around killing fellow crew-members!"
"Any idea that there was any democracy or freedom left died on Venus," Bruce said.
"Now we get another lecture!" Terrence exploded. He leaned forward.
"You're sick, Bruce. They did a bad psych job on you. They should never have sent you on this trip. We need strength, all the strength we can find. You don't belong here."
"I know," Bruce agreed indifferently. "I was drafted for this trip. I told them I shouldn't be brought along. I said I didn't want any part of it."
"Because you're afraid. You're not Conqueror material. That's why you backed down when we all voted to climb the mountain. And what the devil does Venus—?"
Max Drexel's freckles slipped into the creases across his high forehead. "Haven't you heard him expounding on the injustice done to the Venusian aborigines, Captain? If you haven't, you aren't thoroughly educated to the crackpot idealism still infecting certain people."
"I haven't heard it," Terrence admitted. "What injustice?"
Bruce said, "I guess it couldn't really be considered an injustice any longer. Values have changed too much. Doran and I were part of the crew of that first ship to hit Venus, five years ago. Remember? One of the New Era's more infamous dates. Drexel says the Venusians were aborigines. No one ever got a chance to find out. We ran into this village. No one knows how old it was. There were intelligent beings there. One community left on the whole planet, maybe a few thousand inhabitants. They made their last mistake when they came out to greet us. Without even an attempt at communication, they were wiped out. The village was burned and everything alive in it was destroyed."
Bruce felt the old weakness coming into his knees, the sweat beginning to run down his face. He took a deep breath and stood there before the cold nihilistic stares of fourteen eyes.
"No," Bruce said. "I apologize. None of you know what I'm talking about."
Terrence nodded. "You're psycho. It's as simple as that. They pick the most capable for these conquests. Even the flights are processes of elimination. Eventually we get the very best, the most resilient, the real conquering blood. You just don't pass, Bruce. Listen, what do you think gives you the right to stand here in judgment against the laws of the whole Solar System?"
"There are plenty on Earth who agree with me," Bruce said. "I can say what I think now because you can't do more than kill me and you'll do that regardless...."
He stopped. This was ridiculous, a waste of his time. And theirs. They had established a kind of final totalitarianism since the New Era. The psychologists, the Pavlovian Reflex boys, had done that. If you didn't want to be reconditioned to fit into the social machine like a human vacuum tube, you kept your mouth shut. And for many, when the mouth was kept shut long enough, the mind pretty well forgot what it had wanted to open the mouth for in the first place.
A minority in both segments of a world split into two factions. Both had been warring diplomatically and sometimes physically, for centuries, clung to old ideas of freedom, democracy, self-determinism, individualism. To most, the words had no meaning now. It was a question of which set of conquering heroes could conquer the most space first. So far, only Venus had fallen. They had done a good, thorough job there. Four ships had come to Mars and their crews had disappeared. This was the fifth attempt—
Terrence said, "why did you shoot Doran?"
"I didn't like him enough to take the nonsense he was handing me, and when he shot the—" Bruce hesitated.
"What? When he shot what?"
Bruce felt an odd tingling in his stomach. The wind's voice seemed to sharpen and rise to a kind of wail.
"All right, I'll tell you. I was sleeping, having a dream. Doran woke me up. Marsha was with him. I'd forgotten about that geological job we were supposed to be working on. I've had these dreams ever since we got here."
"What kind of dreams?"
Someone laughed.
"Just fantastic stuff. Ask your Pavlovian there," Bruce said. "People talk to me, and there are other things in the dreams. Voices and some kind of shapes that aren't what you would call human at all."
Someone coughed. There was obvious embarrassment in the room.
"It's peculiar, but many faces and voices are those of crew members of some of the ships out there, the ones that never got back to Earth."
Terrence grinned. "Ghosts, Bruce?"
"Maybe. This planet may not be a dead ball of clay. I've had a feeling there's something real in the dreams, but I can't figure it out. You're still interested?"
Terrence nodded and glanced to either side.
"We've seen no indication of any kind of life whatsoever," Bruce pointed out. "Not even an insect, or any kind of plant life except some fungi and lichen down in the crevices. That never seemed logical to me from the start. We've covered the planet everywhere except one place—"
"The mountain," Terrence said. "You've been afraid even to talk about scaling it."
"Not afraid," Bruce objected. "I don't see any need to climb it. Coming to Mars, conquering space, isn't that enough? It happens that the crew of the first ship here decided to climb the mountain, and that set a precedent. Every ship that has come here has had to climb it. Why? Because they had to accept the challenge. And what's happened to them? Like you, they all had the necessary equipment to make a successful climb, but no one's ever come back down. No contact with anything up there.
"Captain, I'm not accepting a ridiculous challenge like that. Why should I? I didn't come here to conquer anything, even a mountain. The challenge of coming to Mars, of going on to where ever you guys intend going before something bigger than you are stops you—it doesn't interest me."
"Nothing's bigger than the destiny of Earth!" Terrence said, sitting up straight and rigid.
"I know," Bruce said. "Anyway, I got off the track. As I was saying, I woke up from this dream and Marsha and Doran were there. Doran was shaking me. But I didn't seem to have gotten entirely awake; either that or some part of the dream was real, because I looked out the window—something was out there, looking at me. It was late, and at first I thought it might be a shadow. But it wasn't. It was misty, almost translucent, but I think it was something alive. I had a feeling it was intelligent, maybe very intelligent. I could feel something in my mind. A kind of beauty and softness and warmth. I kept looking—"
His throat was getting tight. He had difficulty talking. "Doran asked me what I was looking at, and I told him. He laughed. But he looked. Then I realized that maybe I wasn't still dreaming. Doran saw it, too, or thought he did. He kept looking and finally he jumped and grabbed up his rifle and ran outside. I yelled at him. I kept on yelling and ran after him. 'It's intelligent, whatever it is!' I kept saying. 'How do you know it means any harm?' But I heard Doran's rifle go off before I could get to him. And whatever it was we saw, I didn't see it any more. Neither did Doran. Maybe he killed it. I don't know. He had to kill it. That's the way you think."
"What? Explain that remark."
"That's the philosophy of conquest—don't take any chances with aliens. They might hinder our advance across the Universe. So we kill everything. Doran acted without thinking at all. Conditioned to kill everything that doesn't look like us. So I hit Doran and took the gun away from him and killed him. I felt sick, crazy with rage. Maybe that's part of it. All I know is that I thought he deserved to die and that I had to kill him, so I did."
"Is that all, Bruce?"
"That's about all. Except that I'd like to kill all of you. And I would if I had the chance."
"That's what I figured." Terrence turned to the psychologist, a small wiry man who sat there constantly fingering his ear. "Stromberg, what do you think of this gobbledegook? We know he's crazy. But what hit him? You said his record was good up until a year ago."
Stromberg's voice was monotonous, like a voice off of a tape.
"Schizophrenia with mingled delusions of persecution. The schizophrenia is caused by inner conflict—indecision between the older values and our present ones which he hasn't been able to accept. A complete case history would tell why he can't accept our present attitudes. I would say that he has an incipient fear of personal inadequacy, which is why he fears our desire for conquest. He's rationalized, built up a defense which he's structured with his idealism, foundationed with Old Era values. Retreat into the past, an escape from his own present feelings of inadequacy. Also, he escapes into these dream fantasies."
"Yes," Terrence said. "But how does that account for Doran's action? Doran must have seen something—"
"Doran's charts show high suggestibility under stress. Another weak personality eliminated. Let's regard it that way. He imagined he saw something." He glanced at Marsha. "Did you see anything?"
She hesitated, avoiding Bruce's eyes. "Nothing at all. There wasn't anything out there to see, except the dust and rocks. That's all there is to see here. We could stay a million years and never see anything else. A shadow maybe—"
"All right," Terrence interrupted. "Now, Bruce, you know the law regulating the treatment of serious psycho cases in space?"
"Yes. Execution."
"No facilities for handling such cases en route back to Earth."
"I understand. No apologies necessary, Captain."
Terrence shifted his position. "However, we've voted to grant you a kind of leniency. In exchange for a little further service from you, you can remain here on Mars after we leave. You'll be left food-concentrates to last a long time."
"What kind of service?"
"Stay by the radio and take down what we report as we go up the mountain."
"Why not?" Bruce said. "You aren't certain you're coming back, then?"
"We might not," Terrence admitted calmly. "Something's happened to the others. We're going to find out what and we want it recorded. None of us want to back down and stay here. You can take our reports as they come in."
"I'll do that," Bruce said. "It should be interesting."
Bruce watched them go, away and up and around the immediate face of the mountain in the bleak cold of the Martian morning. He watched them disappear behind a high ledge, tied together with plastic rope like convicts.
He stayed by the radio. He lost track of time and didn't care much if he did. Sometimes he took a heavy sedative and slept. The sedative prevented the dreams. He had an idea that the dreams might be so pleasant that he wouldn't wake up. He wanted to listen to Terrence as long as the captain had anything to say. It was nothing but curiosity.
At fifteen thousand feet, Terrence reported only that they were climbing.
At twenty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We're still climbing, and that's all I can report, Bruce. It's worth coming to Mars for—to accept a challenge like this!"
At twenty-five thousand feet, Terrence reported, "We've put on oxygen masks. Jacobs and Drexel have developed some kind of altitude sickness and we're taking a little time out. It's a magnificent sight up here. I can imagine plenty of tourists coming to Mars one of these days, just to climb this mountain! Mt. Everest is a pimple compared with this! What a feeling of power, Bruce!"
From forty thousand feet, Terrence said, "We gauged this mountain at forty-five thousand. But here we are at forty and there doesn't seem to be any top. We can see up and up and the mountain keeps on going. I don't understand how we could have made such an error in our computations. I talked with Burton. He doesn't see how a mountain this high could still be here when the rest of the planet has been worn so smooth."
And then from fifty-three thousand feet, Terrence said with a voice that seemed slightly strained: "No sign of any of the crew of the other four ships yet. Ten in each crew, that makes fifty. Not a sign of any of them so far, but then we seem to have a long way left to climb—"
Bruce listened and noted and took sedatives and opened cans of food concentrates. He smoked and ate and slept. He had plenty of time. He had only time and the dreams which he knew he could utilize later to take care of the time.
From sixty thousand feet, Terrence reported, "I had to shoot Anhauser a few minutes ago! He was dissenting. Hear that, Bruce? One of my most dependable men. We took a vote. A mere formality, of course, whether we should continue climbing or not. We knew we'd all vote to keep on climbing. And then Anhauser dissented. He was hysterical. He refused to accept the majority decision. 'I'm going back down!' he yelled. So I had to shoot him. Imagine a man of his apparent caliber turning anti-democratic like that! This mountain will be a great tester for us in the future. We'll test everybody, find out quickly who the weaklings are."
Bruce listened to the wind. It seemed to rise higher and higher. Terrence, who had climbed still higher, was calling. "Think of it! What a conquest! No man's ever done a thing like this. Like Stromberg says, it's symbolic! We can build spaceships and reach other planets, but that's not actual physical conquest. We feel like gods up here. We can see what we are now. We can see how it's going to be—"
Once in a while Terrence demanded that Bruce say something to prove he was still there taking down what Terrence said. Bruce obliged. A long time passed, the way time does when no one cares. Bruce stopped taking the sedatives finally. The dreams came back and became, somehow, more real each time. He needed the companionship of the dreams.
It was very lonely sitting there without the dreams, with nothing but Terrence's voice ranting excitedly on and on. Terrence didn't seem real any more; certainly not as real as the dreams.
The problem of where to put the line between dream and reality began to worry Bruce. He would wake up and listen and take down what Terrence was saying, and then go to sleep again with increasing expectancy. His dream took on continuity. He could return to the point where he had left it, and it was the same—allowing even for the time difference necessitated by his periods of sleep.
He met people in the dreams, two girls and a man. They had names: Pietro, Marlene, Helene.
Helene he had seen from the beginning, but she became more real to him all the time, until he could talk with her. After that, he could also talk with Marlene and Pietro, and the conversations made sense. Consistently, they made sense.
The Martian landscape was entirely different in the dreams. Green valleys and rivers, or actually wide canals, with odd trees trailing their branches on the slow, peacefully gliding currents. Here and there were pastel-colored cities and there were things drifting through them that were alive and intelligent and soft and warm and wonderful to know.
' ... dreams, in their vivid coloring of life, as in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife of semblance with reality which brings to the delirious eye more lovely things of paradise and love—and all our own!—than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.... '
So sometimes he read poetry, but even that was hardly equal to the dreams.
And then he would wake up and listen to Terrence's voice. He would look out the window over the barren frigid land where there was nothing but seams of worn land, like scabs under the brazen sky.
"If I had a choice," he thought, "I wouldn't ever wake up at all again. The dreams may not be more real, but they're preferable."
Dreams were supposed to be wishful thinking, primarily, but he couldn't live in them very long. His body would dry up and he would die. He had to stay awake enough to put a little energy back into himself. Of course, if he died and lost the dreams, there would be one compensation—he would also be free of Terrence and the rest of them who had learned that the only value in life lay in killing one's way across the Cosmos.
But then he had a feeling Terrence's voice wouldn't be annoying him much more anyway. The voice was unreal, coming out of some void. He could switch off Terrence any time now, but he was still curious.
"Bruce—Bruce, you still there? Listen, we're up here at what we figure to be five hundred thousand feet! It is impossible. We keep climbing and now we look up and we can see up and up and there the mountain is going up and up—"
And some time later: "Bruce, Marsha's dying! We don't know what's the matter. We can't find any reason for it. She's lying here and she keeps laughing and calling your name. She's a woman, so that's probably it. Women don't have real guts."
Bruce bent toward the radio. Outside the shelter, the wind whistled softly at the door.
"Marsha," he said.
"Bruce—"
She hadn't said his name that way for a long time.
"Marsha, remember how we used to talk about human values? I remember how you seemed to have something maybe different from the others. I never thought you'd really buy this will to conquer, and now it doesn't matter...."
He listened to her voice, first the crazy laughter, and then a whisper.
"Bruce, hello down there." Her voice was all mixed up with fear and hysteria and mockery. "Bruce darling, are you lonely down there? I wish I were with you, safe ... free ... warm. I love you. Do you hear that? I really love you, after all. After all...."
Her voice drifted away, came back to him. "We're climbing the highest mountain. What are you doing there, relaxing where it's peaceful and warm and sane? You always were such a calm guy. I remember now. What are you doing—reading poetry while we climb the mountain? What was that, Bruce—that one about the mountain you tried to quote to me last night before you ... I can't remember it now. Darling, what...?"
He stared at the radio. He hesitated, reached out and switched on the mike. He got through to her.
"Hello, hello, darling," he whispered. "Marsha, can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. You down there, all warm and cozy, reading poetry, darling. Where you can see both ways instead of just up and down, up and down."
He tried to imagine where she was now as he spoke to her, how she looked. He thought of Earth and how it had been there, years ago, with Marsha. Things had seemed so different then. There was something of that hope in his voice now as he spoke to her, yet not directly to her, as he looked out the window at the naked frigid sky and the barren rocks.
"'... and there is nowhere to go from the top of a mountain,
But down, my dear;
And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley
Will never seem fresh or clear
For thinking of the glitter of the mountain water
In the feathery green of the year....'"
The wind stormed over the shelter in a burst of power, buried the sound of his own voice.
"Marsha, are you still there?"
"What the devil's the idea, poetry at a time like this, or any time?" Terrence demanded. "Listen, you taking this down? We haven't run into any signs of the others. Six hundred thousand feet, Bruce! We feel our destiny. We conquer the Solar System. And we'll go out and out, and we'll climb the highest mountain, the highest mountain anywhere. We're going up and up. We've voted on it. Unanimous. We go on. On to the top, Bruce! Nothing can stop us. If it takes ten years, a hundred, a thousand years, we'll find it. We'll find the top! Not the top of this world—the top of everything . The top of the
UNIVERSE
!"
Later, Terrence's voice broke off in the middle of something or other—Bruce couldn't make any sense out of it at all—and turned into crazy yells that faded out and never came back.
Bruce figured the others might still be climbing somewhere, or maybe they were dead. Either way it wouldn't make any difference to him. He knew they would never come back down.
He was switching off the radio for good when he saw the coloration break over the window. It was the same as the dream, but for an instant, dream and reality seemed fused like two superimposed film negatives.
He went to the window and looked out. The comfortable little city was out there, and the canal flowing past through a pleasantly cool yet sunny afternoon. Purple mist blanketed the knees of low hills and there was a valley, green and rich with the trees high and full beside the softly flowing canal water.
The filmy shapes that seemed alive, that were partly translucent, drifted along the water's edge, and birds as delicate as colored glass wavered down the wind.
He opened the shelter door and went out. The shelter looked the same, but useless now. How did the shelter of that bleak world get into this one, where the air was warm and fragrant, where there was no cold, from that world into this one of his dreams?
The girl—Helene—was standing there leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette.
He walked toward her, and stopped. In the dream it had been easy, but now he was embarrassed, in spite of the intimacy that had grown between them. She wore the same casual slacks and sandals. Her hair was brown. She was not particularly beautiful, but she was comfortable to look at because she seemed so peaceful. Content, happy with what was and only what was.
He turned quickly. The shelter was still there, and behind it the row of spaceships—not like chalk marks on a tallyboard now, but like odd relics that didn't belong there in the thick green grass. Five ships instead of four.
There was his own individual shelter beyond the headquarters building, and the other buildings. He looked up.
There was no mountain.
For one shivery moment he knew fear. And then the fear went away, and he was ashamed of what he had felt. What he had feared was gone now, and he knew it was gone for good and he would never have to fear it again.
"Look here, Bruce. I wondered how long it would take to get it through that thick poetic head of yours!"
"Get what?" He began to suspect what it was all about now, but he wasn't quite sure yet.
"Smoke?" she said.
He took one of the cigarettes and she lighted it for him and put the lighter back into her pocket.
"It's real nice here," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I guess it's about perfect."
"It'll be easy. Staying here, I mean. We won't be going to Earth ever again, you know."
"I didn't know that, but I didn't think we ever would again."
"We wouldn't want to anyway, would we, Bruce?"
"No."
He kept on looking at the place where the mountain had been. Or maybe it still was; he couldn't make up his mind yet. Which was and which was not? That barren icy world without life, or this?
"' Is all that we see or seem ,'" he whispered, half to himself, "' but a dream within a dream? '"
She laughed softly. "Poe was ahead of his time," she said. "You still don't get it, do you? You don't know what's been happening?"
"Maybe I don't."
She shrugged, and looked in the direction of the ships. "Poor guys. I can't feel much hatred toward them now. The Martians give you a lot of understanding of the human mind—after they've accepted you, and after you've lived with them awhile. But the mountain climbers—we can see now—it's just luck, chance, we weren't like them. A deviant is a child of chance."
"Yes," Bruce said. "There's a lot of people like us on Earth, but they'll never get the chance—the chance we seem to have here, to live decently...."
"You're beginning to see now which was the dream," she said and smiled. "But don't be pessimistic. Those people on Earth will get their chance, too, one of these fine days. The Conquerors aren't getting far. Venus, and then Mars, and Mars is where they stop. They'll keep coming here and climbing the mountain and finally there won't be any more. It won't take so long."
She rose to her toes and waved and yelled. Bruce saw Pietro and Marlene walking hand in hand up the other side of the canal. They waved back and called and then pushed off into the water in a small boat, and drifted away and out of sight around a gentle turn.
She took his arm and they walked along the canal toward where the mountain had been, or still was—he didn't know.
A quarter of a mile beyond the canal, he saw the high mound of red, naked hill, corroded and ugly, rising up like a scar of the surrounding green.
She wasn't smiling now. There were shadows on her face as the pressure on his arm stopped him.
"I was on the first ship and Marlene on the second. None like us on the third, and on the fourth ship was Pietro. All the others had to climb the mountain—" She stopped talking for a moment, and then he felt the pressure of her fingers on his arm. "I'm very glad you came on the fifth," she whispered. "Are you glad now?"
"I'm very glad," he said.
"The Martians tested us," she explained. "They're masters of the mind. I guess they've been grinding along through the evolutionary mill a darn long time, longer than we could estimate now. They learned the horror we're capable of from the first ship—the Conquerors, the climbers. The Martians knew more like them would come and go on into space, killing, destroying for no other reason than their own sickness. Being masters of the mind, the Martians are also capable of hypnosis—no, that's not really the word, only the closest our language comes to naming it. Suggestion so deep and strong that it seems real to one human or a million or a billion; there's no limit to the number that can be influenced. What the people who came off those ships saw wasn't real. It was partly what the Martians wanted them to see and feel—but most of it, like the desire to climb the mountain, was as much a part of the Conquerors' own psychic drive as it was the suggestion of the Martians."
She waved her arm slowly to describe a peak. "The Martians made the mountain real. So real that it could be seen from space, measured by instruments ... even photographed and chipped for rock samples. But you'll see how that was done, Bruce, and realize that this and not the mountain of the Conquerors is the reality of Mars. This is the Mars no Conqueror will ever see."
They walked toward the ugly red mound that jutted above the green. When they came close enough, he saw the bodies lying there ... the remains, actually, of what had once been bodies. He felt too sickened to go on walking.
"It may seem cruel now," she said, "but the Martians realized that there is no cure for the will to conquer. There is no safety from it, either, as the people of Earth and Venus discovered, unless it is given an impossible obstacle to overcome. So the Martians provided the Conquerors with a mountain. They themselves wanted to climb. They had to."
He was hardly listening as he walked away from Helene toward the eroded hills. The crew members of the first four ships were skeletons tied together with imperishably strong rope about their waists. Far beyond them were those from Mars V , too freshly dead to have decayed much ... Anhauser with his rope cut, a bullet in his head; Jacobs and Marsha and the others ... Terrence much past them all. He had managed to climb higher than anyone else and he lay with his arms stretched out, his fingers still clutching at rock outcroppings.
The trail they left wound over the ground, chipped in places for holds, red elsewhere with blood from torn hands. Terrence was more than twelve miles from the ship—horizontally.
Bruce lifted Marsha and carried her back over the rocky dust, into the fresh fragrance of the high grass, and across it to the shade and peace beside the canal.
He put her down. She looked peaceful enough, more peaceful than that other time, years ago, when the two of them seemed to have shared so much, when the future had not yet destroyed her. He saw the shadow of Helene bend across Marsha's face against the background of the silently flowing water of the cool, green canal.
"You loved her?"
"Once," Bruce said. "She might have been sane. They got her when she was young. Too young to fight. But she would have, I think, if she'd been older when they got her."
He sat looking down at Marsha's face, and then at the water with the leaves floating down it.
"'... And the springs that flow on the floor of the valley will never seem fresh or clear for thinking of the glitter of the mountain water in the feathery green of the year....'"
He stood up, walked back with Helene along the canal toward the calm city. He didn't look back.
"They've all been dead quite a while," Bruce said wonderingly. "Yet I seemed to be hearing from Terrence until only a short time ago. Are—are the climbers still climbing—somewhere, Helene?"
"Who knows?" Helene answered softly. "Maybe. I doubt if even the Martians have the answer to that."
They entered the city.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Bridge Crossing by Dave Dryfoos.
Relevant chunks:
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The protagonist of this story is Roddie, a young male character whose interactions with the characters around him include mechanical arms and robotic functionalities. It turns out that Roddie lives within a dystopian city, to which alongside his android friends, seek to defend the city against its enemy. Whilst going about his day, Roddie investigates the manhole he often frequents and finds that it has recently been visited by something warm. Further investigation reveals Ida to be the culprit, a human female who has decided to help the wounded in the city.\n\nDespite Roddie’s initial hesitance, Ida and Roddie strike up an easygoing acquaintance and gallivant around the city, with the latter guiding the former due to his experience. In addition to helping Ida find food and shelter, Roddie is able to ward off a potential attack from an android soldier with a talisman - his watch. However, this watch leads Ida to be suspicious of Roddie. As they neared the bridge, Ida insists on bringing Roddie back to where he belongs, fearing he had been wrongfully taken or indoctrinated. After a chase and climbing up the south tower, Roddie notices that Ida may be able to inform her fellow humans on how to infiltrate the city due to them being on top of the bridge. Choosing to defend his city and prove himself to his friends, Roddie does not hesitate to kill Ida and advances to do so. Ida begins to cry and defend her people - insisting that they are on the same side as Men and that the city belongs to the two of them, not Roddie’s friends. Initially in disbelief, Roddie continues to advance before deciding to leave it for the next morning before comforting Ida and later on, realizing that he too, is Man. \n",
"Roddie, a man, raised by the androids in the ruined city, is angry to be left behind with his nurse, Molly, whenever the soldiers go out to fight the Invaders from the north. When he complains about it with Molly, a nursing android, Molly’s robotic response irritates him, and he rips her head off her neck. The soldiers come back when Roddie is repairing Molly. Roddie orders the soldiers to line up and report, inspecting their damages. One soldier suddenly attacks Roddie as it seems to identify Roddie as one of the Invaders, but Molly protects Roddie, and he stops it. After the chaos has been eased, Roddie tries to fix and recombine the damaged soldier while reflecting on the dim future for him and the city. He accidentally burns his hair, and a civil defender firefighter covers him with carbon dioxide foam, irritating him and making him run away. \n\nOn the street, Roddie feels cold, being shamed by the sensation of coldness and reflecting on all the other differences that he has from the androids. The night comes, and he tries to find the way down to his usual hiding spot: a manhole under a bar. Once he arrives at the bottom of the manhole, he feels the warmth, realizing that something had just rested there. He prepares his hammer as a weapon, touches the thing in the darkness, and gets attacked by it. It is a girl named Ida who is one of the Invaders. She identifies Roddie as one of her sides. Roddie takes advantage of that, intending to kill her after gaining more information about the way to pass the impassable Golden Gate Bridge that connects the ruins and the Invaders’ area. After the conversation with Ida, Roddie climbs out of the manhole, followed by Ida. When he learns that Ida recognizes him as one of the Invaders, he thinks it is his chance to be accepted by his friends by giving them his achievement. Roddie learns many new things and beliefs from Ida on their way to the bridge. They also meet an android, but Roddie lets it go away without hurting them. Roddie finds canned baby food from the ruined supermarket to feed him and Ida. Once they arrive at the bridge, as Ida keeps going towards it, Roddie grabs her, but Ida loosens his grip and escapes from him. She climbs on the dangling wire, followed by him. Ida is scared and wants to stop on the wire, but Roddie forces her to keep climbing. After they arrive at the tower, Roddie tries to kill Ida as she may bring more Invaders to come, but Ida tells him that he is a human, not an android, and surrenders herself to him. After the dispute about his identity and the superiority of either the robot or the humans, Roddie decides to wait for a night. The following day, Roddie acknowledges himself as a man.",
"The story follows the journey of a man called Roddie. He lives in a destroyed San Francisco under the care of a robot called Molly. San Francisco is protected against “invaders” by other robots, who Roddie takes care of with his tools. Roddie believes that the robots are his friends and wishes to go out and fight with them against the invaders. Roddie knows that he is different from the robots, but still wishes to become a part of them. When Molly and other robots start to malfunction more and more, Roddie runs to a manhole which he uses as a hiding place. Here, he meets a girl called Ida. Roddie believes that he has to kill Ida in order to finally be able to fight side by side with the robots, but decides to first get information out of her. They traverse together to the Golden Gate Bridge, where Ida tells him that the invaders are in fact humans like them that go into the city in order to get food and supplies. Roddie doesn’t want to believe that he is like an invader, so he chases Ida to the top of the bridge in order to kill her. Here, they confront each other and Roddie was very close to killing her, but decides not to. At the end, it is insinuated that Roddie learns that he belongs with the humans at the other side of the bridge and not with the robots.",
"It’s the twenty-fourth century. San Francisco is ruined and now guarded by robot soldiers built by humans in the past. They fight with humans - Invaders - and don’t let them come to the city. Roddie lives with Molly - a robotic nurse who still treats him as a child - and hasn’t seen an invader. He sits with Molly and complains about not being allowed to fight alongside the soldiers. She starts singing a children’s song, and Roddie rips her head off her neck. Soldiers come back. Roddie tries to fix one of them, but the robot unexpectedly attacks the young man. Molly defends Roddie by thrusting needles into the robot’s eyes. Roddie is working and thinking about his desire to be accepted by the soldiers. His hair catches fire accidentally, and a Civil Defense firefighter covers him with carbon dioxide foam. Roddie gets frustrated and leaves. He is walking along cold streets and stone ruins toward his hideout. Roddie comes down to his manhole and realizes that someone was there. He starts moving in the darkness and soon finds Ida, a young human girl. Roddie understands that she thinks he is one of her kind and continues talking to her. She came on some boat and followed Roddie’s footprints to his hideout. Ida says she knows a way over the Golden Gate Bridge and invites Roddie to go with her. They leave the hole, and Ida starts laughing at the diapers he’s wearing. While walking, Ida tells him that men rely on raids for tools and that she left here to help the wounded. Suddenly they meet one of the soldiers, Roddie quickly tells him everything is fine, and the robot leaves. Ida kisses him after the shock. They go to a supermarket to get food, and Ida asks why the robot let them go. Roddie shows her his watch - a talisman, and she looks scared. They reach the bridge. Ida starts leading him somewhere unknown, saying that she’s taking him where he belongs. He refuses and starts chasing her with a hummer. While following her, Roddie starts walking along the suspension cable’s steel surface; soon, walking turns into crawling. He thinks about killing Ida - it will earn him a place among the robot soldiers. They keep going up, finally reach a tower, and fall asleep for several hours. They wake up, and Roddie decides to look around the tower. He can see Mount Tamalpais, the Twin Peaks, and Mount Diablo. He follows Ida’s gaze and finds the secret path the invaders are using. Roddie prepares to kill Ida, but she starts crying - it disturbs him. She tells him that he is a man, not a robot. Roddie says he believes the true men are rational and superior - thus, the robot soldiers are the real men. She asks him why killing a defenseless girl is rational and says that emotion is for creating. Roddie tucks his hammer away and comforts crying Ida.\n\n\n"
] |
51241
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Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
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How does Roddie use his tools (screwdriver and hammer) throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Bridge Crossing by Dave Dryfoos.
Relevant chunks:
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
Question:
How does Roddie use his tools (screwdriver and hammer) throughout the story?
Answer:
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[
"The first tool that Roddie uses is a screwdriver with a broken handle. He uses it to tinker with and screw Molly’s head back onto her robot body, after tearing it off himself. He also used it when he was considering heating it over a fire to mold it into a different tool, but ended up not completing it. \n\nHis hammer is his weapon. Roddie keeps his hammer on his body, which he was able to reach for conveniently when he initially found a warm body hiding in the manhole. All throughout this initial encounter with Ida, Roddie has his hammer close to him, either clutching it or holding it in his mouth while climbing the ladder. He also uses it as a tool to break open cans. Finally, at the end of the story, he is prepared to use the hammer to kill Ida - even going as far as raising it threateningly - before deciding not to. \n",
"Roddie uses the screwdriver to repair the androids when the soldier ones come back with damages. After ripping her head off her neck, he also uses it to repair Molly, a nursing android. Roddie uses the hammer as a weapon to protect himself whenever he feels there is danger nearby. During his conversation with Ida, he holds the hammer in hand all the time so that he can attack at any time needed. He also uses the hammer to open the canned baby food that he finds in the ruined supermarket. He tries to use the hammer to kill Ida after they arrive at the tower across the bridge, but he doesn’t.",
"Throughout the story, Roddie has to use his tools in different ways. At the beginning, he has to use his screwdriver in order to fix Molly and the other robots that reached his building. When Molly malfunctions, Roddie tries to fix her using the screwdriver. He also uses the screwdriver to fix some robots that were badly damaged after fighting with some invaders. Roddie also uses the hammer, but he uses it as a weapon. When he encounters Ida, he wants to kill her using the hammer, and the same thing happens on the bridge.",
"Roddie uses his screwdriver when dealing with the mechanical parts of the robots. When one of the soldiers collapses, Roddie combines his metal limbs with the other ones he has, using the screwdriver. A hammer is a fighting tool for Roddie. He has it in his hand when he senses someone else’s presence in his hideout. Roddie tries to attack Ida near the bridge and kill her near the tower at the very end with his hammer but changes his mind. He also uses it to get baby food at the supermarket. "
] |
51241
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Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
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Who is Ida and what are her characteristics?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Bridge Crossing by Dave Dryfoos.
Relevant chunks:
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
Question:
Who is Ida and what are her characteristics?
Answer:
|
[
"Ida is a human girl that Roddie first encounters when she is hiding in the manhole that he frequents himself. She appears to have come into the android-ridden city on her own with the altruistic desire to help the wounded. She is selfless and persistent in her mission. She is inexperienced with the android world as demonstrated by her fright when the pair encountered a soldier, who only walked away after Roddie confronted it. Similarly, Roddie had to guide her around the city and help her with access to resources like shelter and food. \n\nIda is loyal and brave as well. Despite Roddie threatening to kill her at the end of the story, Ida insists on the idea that they are both human and that Roddie’s way of thinking was incorrect. In the end, she is able to discourage him from killing her and he ends up comforting her. \n\n",
"Ida is short and lean, wearing a doeskin dress. Her legs are slender, and her tiny bare feet wear nothing. Her face is tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and dark eyes. She is friendly to Roddie when she guesses he is lost from the boat. Ida is brilliant as she figures out Roddie’s identity after his interaction with an android and his familiarity with the surrounding areas and baby food. She is also brave as she suppresses her fear and manages her way to escape from Roddie after knowing his intention to catch her. She is dedicated as her purpose in ruins is to help her fellows in every way possible. Roddie sees her as purposeless and impulsive. She is weaker than Roddie. She is nervous and scared when they walk towards the bridge, being furtive and close behind Roddie. She is emotional, and she considers it a good thing because she is angry at Roddie’s claim of the superiority of being rational.",
"Ida is a girl that traversed illegally into San Francisco in order to help men get supplies and fight the robots that patrolled the city. Women weren’t allowed to go into the city, so she snuck into one of the boats in order to help the wounded men who were fighting. She is described as small and thin, but that allows her to be quick and agile. When Ida meets Roddie, she wants to bring him back to the humans so he can learn where he comes from, and that he doesn’t belong with the robots. She is very brave, because she wasn’t afraid of being killed by Roddie or the robots. ",
"Ida is a young girl, one of the Invaders living outside the city. The fact that she followed Roddie’s footprints and found his hideout seems to indicate her intelligence. She is brave and compassionate - Ida was ready to secretly leave her safe community and come to the city to help the wounded. She is emotional: we see that when she unexpectedly kisses Roddie or when she starts crying at the end. Ida also has a strong sense of justice - she considers returning the city to men a necessity, she thinks San Francisco belongs to them. Ida also doesn’t seem to like violence or destructive behavior - this is what she says to Roddie at the end. \n"
] |
51241
|
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
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How does Roddie figure out why he's different from his friends?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Bridge Crossing by Dave Dryfoos.
Relevant chunks:
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
Question:
How does Roddie figure out why he's different from his friends?
Answer:
|
[
"Put simply, Roddie is Man and his friends in the story are androids. Despite growing up with them and having been brought up by Molly, Roddie is human. One clear difference is the fact that Roddie is able to tear off the limbs of his friends and repair it back together. For example, he tore off Molly’s head when her “spells” became worse, and then later tinkered it back on her head. Another example of this difference is when Ida begins to cry at the end of the story, and Roddie internally expresses that the first time he wept was the first time he noted a difference between him and his android friends, who presumably cannot emote in the same way. Similarly, they do not know pain nor fatigue, so Roddie pretends he doesn’t either. At the very end of the story, he finally accepts that he is Man. \n",
"Roddie knows that he is weaker than Molly, his nursing android, and other soldiers as he has all the sensations, such as coldness, hunger, pain, and thirst, while they don’t. The growth he has been undergoing until recently is also a sign that he is different from his friends, the soldier androids in the city. His yearning to sleep amid the danger makes him think that he was built by an apprentice when he still believes he is one of the androids. He learns from Ida, a girl he meets in his hiding place, that all the androids are heat-sensitive to locate them in the dark. He also realizes the similarities between Ida and him when Ida is supposed to be the Invader. After going through all the obstacles with Ida to cross the bridge and feeling his weakness on the cable, he realizes the differences between his friends and him again. Recalling his memory of weeping after seeing Ida weep when she tries to convince him that he is a man, not an android, Roddie finally acknowledges himself as a man different from his friends.",
"Roddie always knew that he was different from the robots which he lived with. He didn’t have the same build, or the same gears and cables as them. Roddie always wanted to prove that he was the same, and that he could help them fight. When he meets Ida, who is very similar to him, he starts to doubt where he belongs. Ida helps him understand that he is in fact human, and not a robot. He learns that he belongs with the other humans outside the city, and not with the robots. ",
"\nThroughout the story, Roddie ponders the question of identity: he is different from Molly and the soldiers. Roddie can feel pain, he can be hot and cold, exhausted, hungry, or sleepy. While growing up, Roddie knew that the robots surrounding him did not have the same experience. He cried when he realized that he was different. This emotion also made him unique. After meeting Ida, he slowly analyzes her behavioral traits and sees how similar they are. She says that he is a human being, not a robot. He believes rationality creates the superior. But Roddie knows he’s not a completely rational creature - he has feelings, too. Roddie spends enough time with her to finally accept that he is a man, not a soldier. "
] |
51241
|
Bridge Crossing
BY DAVE DRYFOOS
Illustrated by HARRISON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He knew the city was organized for his individual defense, for it had been that way since he was born. But who was his enemy?
In 1849, the mist that sometimes rolled through the Golden Gate was known as fog. In 2149, it had become far more frequent, and was known as smog. By 2349, it was fog again.
But tonight there was smoke mixed with the fog. Roddie could smell it. Somewhere in the forested ruins, fire was burning.
He wasn't worried. The small blaze that smoldered behind him on the cracked concrete floor had consumed everything burnable within blocks; what remained of the gutted concrete office building from which he peered was fire-proof.
But Roddie was himself aflame with anger. As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?"
Fiercely he crossed the bare, gritty floor and shook Molly's shoulder. She rattled under his jarring hand, and abruptly changed the subject.
"A is for Atom, B is for Bomb, C is for Corpse—" she chanted.
Roddie reached into her shapeless dress and pinched. Lately that had helped her over these spells. But this time, though it stopped the kindergarten song, the treatment only started something worse.
"Wuzzums hungry?" Molly cooed, still rocking.
Utterly disgusted, Roddie ripped her head off her neck.
It was a completely futile gesture. The complicated mind that had cared for him and taught him speech and the alphabet hadn't made him a mechanic, and his only tool was a broken-handled screwdriver.
He was still tinkering when the soldiers came in. While they lined up along the wall, he put Molly's head back on her neck.
She gaped coyly at the new arrivals. "Hello, boys," she simpered.
"Looking for a good time?"
Roddie slapped her to silence, reflecting briefly that there were many things he didn't know about Molly. But there was work to be done. Carefully he framed the ritual words she'd taught him: "Soldiers, come to attention and report!"
There were eleven of them, six feet tall, with four limbs and eight extremities. They stood uniformly, the thumbs on each pair of hands touching along the center line of the legs, front feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees, rear feet turned inward at thirty degrees.
"Sir," they chorused, "we have met the enemy and he is ours."
He inspected them. All were scratched and dented, but one in particular seemed badly damaged. His left arm was almost severed at the shoulder.
"Come here, fellow," Roddie said. "Let's see if I can fix that."
The soldier took a step forward, lurched suddenly, stopped, and whipped out a bayonet.
"Death to Invaders!" he yelled, and charged crazily.
Molly stepped in front of him.
"You aren't being very nice to my baby," she murmured, and thrust her knitting needles into his eyes.
Roddie jumped behind him, knocked off his helmet, and pressed a soft spot on his conical skull. The soldier collapsed to the floor.
Roddie salvaged and returned Molly's needles. Then he examined the patient, tearing him apart as a boy dismembers an alarm clock.
It was lucky he did. The left arm's pair of hands suddenly writhed off the floor in an effort to choke him. But because the arm was detached at the shoulder and therefore blind, he escaped the clutching onslaught and could goad the reflexing hands into assaulting one another harmlessly.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers left, except for one, apparently another casualty, who stumbled on his way out and fell into the fire. By the time Roddie had hauled him clear, damage was beyond repair. Roddie swore, then decided to try combining parts of this casualty with pieces of the other to make a whole one.
To get more light for the operation, he poked up the fire. Roddie was new at his work, and took it seriously. It alarmed him to watch the soldiers melt away, gradually succumbing to battle damage, shamed him to see the empty ruins burn section by section as the Invaders repeatedly broke through and had to be burned out.
Soon there would be nothing left of the Private Property Keep Out that, according to Molly's bedtime story, the Owners had entrusted to them when driven away by radioactivity. Soon the soldiers themselves would be gone. None would remain to guard the city but a few strayed servants like Molly, and an occasional Civil Defender.
And himself, Roddie reflected, spitting savagely into the fire. He might remain. But how he fitted into the picture, he didn't know. And Molly, who claimed to have found him in the ruins after a fight with Invaders twenty years before, couldn't or wouldn't say.
Well, for as long as possible, Roddie decided, he'd do his duty as the others did theirs—single-mindedly. Eventually the soldiers might accept him as one of themselves; meanwhile, this newly attempted first aid was useful to them.
He gave the fire a final poke and then paused, wondering if, when heated, his screwdriver could make an unfastened end of wire stick on the grayish spot where it seemed to belong.
Stretching prone to blow the embers hot so he could try out his new idea, Roddie got too close to the flames. Instantly the room filled with the stench of singed hair. Roddie drew angrily back, beating out the sparks in his uncut blond mane.
As he stood slapping his head and muttering, a deranged Civil Defense firefighter popped into the doorway and covered him with carbon dioxide foam.
Roddie fled. His life-long friends were not merely wearing out, they were unbearably wearing.
In the street, even before he'd wiped off the foam, he regretted his flight. The fire was back home. And here in the cold of this fog-shrouded canyon, a mere trail between heaped-up walls of rubble, the diaper he wore felt inadequate against the pre-dawn cold. His cherished weapon, a magnetic tack-hammer, was chill beneath the diaper's top, and the broken, radium-dialed wristwatch suspended from a string around his neck hung clammy against his chest. He stood irresolute on numbing bare feet, and considered returning to the more familiar bedlam.
But colder than cold was his shame at being cold. Molly never was, though she knew how to keep him warm, nor were the others. Hunger, thirst, pain and coldness were sensations never experienced by his friends. Like the growth he'd been undergoing till recently, these were things of ignominy, to be hidden as far as possible from inquiring eyes. Cold as it was, he'd have to hide.
Temporarily, the darkness concealed him, though it was not quite complete. From above the fog, the moon played vaguely deceptive light on the splinters of architecture looming toward it. Some distance off, an owl hooted, but here nocturnal rodents felt free to squeak and rustle as they scampered.
The world seemed ghostly. Yet it wasn't dead; it merely lurked. And as an irrepressible yawn reminded Roddie of his absurd need for sleep even in the midst of danger, he concluded for the thousandth time that the One who'd built him must have been an apprentice.
For just such reasons he'd developed the hideout toward which he now walked. It had been the haven of his adolescence, when the discovery of how much he differed from his friends had been a shock, and the shock itself a difference to be hidden.
His hiding place was a manhole, dead center in the dead street. A weathered bronze bar, carefully placed in the cover's slotted rim, was the levering key that opened its door.
Everything was wrong tonight! He couldn't even find the bar. Of course that spoiled things, because the bar was a roller on which to move the heavy cover from below, and a support that held it ajar for ventilation.
But the example of his friends had taught him above all else to carry out every purpose. Molly was a nurse; she had raised him despite all obstacles. The soldiers were guards; they protected the ruins against everything larger than a rat. The firefighter had put even him out when he was aflame....
Anyhow, the manhole cover had been loosened by his frequent handling. He lifted it aside by main strength, then flattened himself to the street, and felt with his feet for the top rung.
Halfway down the iron ladder, something made him pause. He looked, but saw only blackness. He listened, sniffed, found nothing. What could have entered through the iron cover?
He sneered at his own timidity and jumped to the bottom.
It was warm! The dry bottom of the hole had the temperature of body heat, as if a large animal had recently rested there!
Quickly, Roddie drew the hammer from his waist. Then, with weapon ready for an instantaneous blow, he stretched his left hand through the darkness. He touched something warm, softish. Gingerly he felt over that curving surface for identifying features.
While Roddie investigated by touch, his long fingers were suddenly seized and bitten. At the same time, his right shin received a savage kick. And his own retaliatory blow was checked in mid-swing by an unexpected voice.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" it whispered angrily. "Who do you think you are?"
Startled, he dropped his hammer. "I'm Roddie," he said, squatting to fumble for it. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm Ida, naturally! Just how many girls are there in this raiding party?"
His first Invader—and he had dropped his weapon!
Scrabbling fearfully in the dust for his hammer, Roddie paused suddenly. This girl—whatever that was—seemed to think him one of her own kind. There was a chance, not much, but worth taking, to turn delay to advantage. Maybe he could learn something of value before he killed her. That would make the soldiers accept him!
He stalled, seeking a gambit. "How would I know how many girls there are?"
Half expecting a blow, he got instead an apology. "I'm sorry," the girl said. "I should have known. Never even heard your name before, either. Roddie.... Whose boat did you come in, Roddie?"
Boat? What was a boat? "How would I know?" he repeated, voice tight with fear of discovery.
If she noticed the tension, she didn't show it. Certainly her whisper was friendly enough. "Oh, you're one of the fellows from Bodega, then. They shoved a boy into our boat at the last minute, too. Tough, wasn't it, getting separated in the fog and tide like that? If only we didn't have to use boats.... But, say, how are we going to get away from here?"
"I wouldn't know," Roddie said, closing his fingers on the hammer, and rising. "How did you get in?"
"Followed your footprints. It was sundown and I saw human tracks in the dust and they led me here. Where were you?"
"Scouting around," Roddie said vaguely. "How did you know I was a man when I came back?"
"Because you couldn't see me, silly! You know perfectly well these androids are heat-sensitive and can locate us in the dark!"
Indeed he did know! Many times he'd felt ashamed that Molly could find him whenever she wanted to, even here in the manhole. But perhaps the manhole would help him now to redeem himself....
"I'd like to get a look at you," he said.
The girl laughed self-consciously. "It's getting gray out. You'll see me soon enough."
But she'd see him , Roddie realized. He had to talk fast.
"What'll we do when it's light?" he asked.
"Well, I guess the boats have gone," Ida said. "You could swim the Gate, I guess—you seem tall and strong enough. But I couldn't. You'll think it's crazy, but I've given this some thought, and even looked it over from the other side. I expect to try the Golden Gate Bridge!"
Now he was getting somewhere! The bridge was ruined, impassable. Even her own people had crossed the Strait by other means. But if there were a way over the bridge....
"It's broken," he said. "How in the world can we cross it?"
"Oh, you'll find out, if you take me up there. I—I don't want to be alone, Roddie. Will you go with me? Now?"
Well, she could be made to point out the route before he killed her— if nothing happened when she saw him.
Uneasy, Roddie hefted the hammer in his hand.
A giggle broke the pause. "It's nice of you to wait and let me go first up the ladder," the girl said. "But where the heck is the rusty old thing?"
"I'll go first," said Roddie. He might need the advantage. "The ladder's right behind me."
He climbed with hammer in teeth, and stretched his left hand from street level to grasp and neutralize the girl's right. Then, nervously fingering his weapon, he stared at her in the thin gray dawn.
She was short and lean, except for roundnesses here and there. From her shapeless doeskin dress stretched slender legs that tapered to feet that were bare, tiny, and, like her hands, only two in number.
Roddie was pleased. They were evenly matched as to members, and that would make things easy when the time came.
He looked into her face. It smiled at him, tanned and ruddy, with a full mouth and bright dark eyes that hid under long lashes when he looked too long.
Startling, those wary eyes. Concealing. For a moment he felt a rush of fear, but she gave his hand a squeeze before twisting loose, and burst into sudden laughter.
"Diapers!" she chortled, struggling to keep her voice low. "My big, strong, blond and blue-eyed hero goes into battle wearing diapers, and carrying only a hammer to fight with! You're the most unforgettable character I have ever known!"
He'd passed inspection, then—so far. He expelled his withheld breath, and said, "I think you'll find me a little odd, in some ways."
"Oh, not at all," Ida replied quickly. "Different, yes, but I wouldn't say odd."
When they started down the street, she was nervous despite Roddie's assertion that he knew where the soldiers were posted. He wondered if she felt some of the doubt he'd tried to conceal, shared his visions of what the soldiers might do if they found him brazenly strolling with an Invader. They might not believe he was only questioning a prisoner.
Every day, his friends were becoming more unpredictable.
For that very reason, because he didn't know what precautions would do any good, he took a chance and walked openly to the bridge by the most direct route. In time this apparent assurance stilled Ida's fears, and she began to talk.
Many of the things she said were beyond his experience and meaningless to him, but he did note with interest how effective the soldiers had been.
"It's awful," Ida said. "So few young men are left, so many casualties....
"But why do you—we—keep up the fight?" Roddie asked. "I mean, the soldiers will never leave the city; their purpose is to guard it and they can't leave, so they won't attack. Let them alone, and there'll be plenty of young men."
"Well!" said Ida, sharply. "You need indoctrination! Didn't they ever tell you that the city is our home, even if the stupid androids do keep us out? Don't you know how dependent we are on these raids for all our tools and things?"
She sounded suspicious. Roddie shot her a furtive, startled glance. But she wasn't standing off to fight him. On the contrary, she was too close for both comfort and combat. She bumped him hip and shoulder every few steps, and if he edged away, she followed.
He went on with his questioning. "Why are you here? I mean, sure, the others are after tools and things, but what's your purpose?"
Ida shrugged. "I'll admit no girl has ever done it before," she said,
"but I thought I could help with the wounded. That's why I have no weapon."
She hesitated, glanced covertly up at him, and went on with a rush of words. "It's the lack of men, I guess. All the girls are kind of bored and hopeless, so I got this bright idea and stowed away on one of the boats when it was dark and the fog had settled down. Do you think I was being silly?"
"No, but you do seem a little purposeless."
In silence they trudged through a vast area of charred wood and concrete foundations on the northern end of the city. Thick fog over the water hid Alcatraz, but in-shore visibility was better, and they could see the beginning of the bridge approach.
A stone rattled nearby. There was a clink of metal. Ida gasped, and clung to Roddie's arm.
"Behind me!" he whispered urgently. "Get behind me and hold on!"
He felt Ida's arms encircling his waist, her chin digging into his back below the left shoulder. Facing them, a hundred feet away, stood a soldier. He looked contemptuous, hostile.
"It's all right," Roddie said, his voice breaking.
There was a long, sullen, heart-stopping stare. Then the soldier turned and walked away.
Ida's grip loosened, and he could feel her sag behind him. Roddie turned and held her. With eyes closed, she pressed cold blue lips to his. He grimaced and turned away his head.
Ida's response was quick. "Forgive me," she breathed, and slipped from his arms, but she held herself erect. "I was so scared. And then we've had no sleep, no food or water."
Roddie was familiar with these signs of weakness, proud of appearing to deny his own humiliating needs.
"I guess you're not as strong as me," he said smugly. "I'll take care of you. Of course we can't sleep now, but I'll get food and water."
Leaving her to follow, he turned left to the ruins of a supermarket he had previously visited, demonstrating his superior strength by setting a pace Ida couldn't match. By the time she caught up with him, he had grubbed out a few cans of the special size that Molly always chose. Picking two that were neither dented, swollen, nor rusted, he smashed an end of each with his hammer, and gave Ida her choice of strained spinach or squash.
"Baby food!" she muttered. "Maybe it's just what we need, but to eat baby food with a man wearing a diaper.... Tell me, Roddie, how did you happen to know where to find it?"
"Well, this is the northern end of the city," he answered, shrugging.
"I've been here before."
"Why did the soldier let us go?"
"This watch," he said, touching the radium dial. "It's a talisman."
But Ida's eyes had widened, and the color was gone from her face. She was silent, too, except when asking him to fill his fast-emptied can with rain-water. She didn't finish her own portion, but lay back in the rubble with feet higher than her head, obviously trying to renew her strength.
And when they resumed their walk, her sullen, fear-clouded face showed plainly that he'd given himself away.
But to kill her now, before learning how she planned to cross the supposedly impassable bridge, seemed as purposeless and impulsive as Ida herself. Roddie didn't think, in any case, that her death would satisfy the soldiers. With new and useful information to offer, he might join them as an equal at last. But if his dalliance with this enemy seemed pointless, not even Molly's knitting needles could protect him.
He was sure the soldiers must be tracking the mysterious emanations of his watch dial, and had trouble to keep from glancing over his shoulder at every step. But arrival at the bridge approach ended the need for this self-restraint. Here, difficult going demanded full attention.
He'd never gone as far as the bridge before, not having wanted to look as if he might be leaving the city. The approach was a jungle of concrete with an underbrush of reinforcing-steel that reached for the unwary with rusted spines. Frequently they had to balance on cracked girders, and inch over roadless spots high off the ground.
Here Ida took the lead. When they got to where three approach roads made a clover-leaf, she led him down a side road and into a forest.
Roddie stopped, and seized her arm.
"What are you trying to do?" he demanded.
"I'm taking you with me," Ida said firmly. "Taking you where you belong!"
"No!" he blurted, drawing his hammer. "I can't go, nor let you go. I belong here!"
Ida gasped, twisted loose, and ran. Roddie ran after her.
She wasn't so easily caught. Like a frightened doe, she dashed in and out among the trees, leaped to the bridge's underpinnings where they thrust rustedly from a cliff, and scrambled up the ramp.
Roddie sighed and slowed down. The pavement ended just beyond the cable anchors. From there to the south tower, only an occasional dangling support wire showed where the actual bridge had been suspended. Ida was trapped.
He could take his time. Let the soldiers come up, as they undoubtedly would, to finish the job....
But Ida didn't seem to realize she was trapped. Without hesitation she dashed up the main left-hand suspension cable and ran along its curved steel surface.
For a moment, Roddie thought of letting her go, letting her run up the ever-steepening catenary until—because there were no guard-ropes or handgrips—she simply fell. That would solve his problem.
Except it wouldn't be his solution. Her death wouldn't prove him to his friends.
He set out quickly, before Ida was lost to sight in the thick fog that billowed in straight from the ocean. At first he ran erect along the top of the yard-wide cylinder of twisted metal, but soon the curve steepened. He had to go on all fours, clinging palm and sole.
Blood was on the cable where she'd passed. More blood stained it when he'd followed.
But because his friends knew neither pain nor fatigue, Roddie would admit none either. Nor would he give in to the fear that dizzied him at every downward look. He scrambled on like an automaton, watching only his holds, till he rammed Ida's rear with his head.
She had stopped, trembling and gasping. Roddie clung just below her and looked dazedly around. There was nothing in sight but fog, pierced by the rapier of rusted wire supporting them. Neither end of it was in sight.
Upward lay success, if death were not nearer on the cable. No soldier had ever come even this far, for soldiers, as he'd told Ida, never left the city, were not built to do so. But he was here; with luck, he could capitalize on the differences that had plagued him so long.
"Go on!" he ordered hoarsely. "Move!"
There was neither answer nor result. He broke off an end of loosened wire and jabbed her rear. Ida gasped and crawled on.
Up and up they went, chilled, wet, bleeding, pain-racked, exhausted. Never had Roddie felt so thoroughly the defects of his peculiar non-mechanical construction.
Without realizing it, he acquired a new purpose, a duty as compelling as that of any soldier or fire-watcher. He had to keep that trembling body of his alive, mount to the tall rust tower overhead.
He climbed and he made Ida climb, till, at nightmare's end, the fog thinned and they came into clear, windswept air and clawed up the last hundred feet to sanctuary.
They were completely spent. Without word or thought they crept within the tower, huddled together for warmth on its dank steel deck, and slept for several hours.
Roddie awoke as Ida finished struggling free of his unconscious grip. Limping, he joined her painful walk around the tower. From its openings they looked out on a strange and isolated world.
To the north, where Ida seemed drawn as though by instinct, Mount Tamalpais reared its brushy head, a looming island above a billowy white sea of fog. To the south were the Twin Peaks, a pair of buttons on a cotton sheet. Eastward lay Mount Diablo, bald and brooding, tallest of the peaks and most forbidding.
But westward over the ocean lay the land of gold—of all the kinds of gold there are, from brightest yellow to deepest orange. Only a small portion of the setting sun glared above the fog-bank; the rest seemed to have been broken off and smeared around by a child in love with its color.
Fascinated, Roddie stared for minutes, but turned when Ida showed no interest. She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge.
Roddie took the hammer from his waist.
"Don't! Oh, don't!" Ida screamed. She burst into tears and covered her face with scratched and bloodied hands.
Surprised, Roddie withheld the blow. He had wept, as a child, and, weeping, had for the first time learned he differed from his friends. Ida's tears disturbed him, bringing unhappy memories.
"Why should you cry?" he asked comfortingly. "You know your people will come back to avenge you and will destroy my friends."
"But—but my people are your people, too," Ida wailed. "It's so senseless, now, after all our struggle to escape. Don't you see? Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him.
"Rational! What's rational about murdering a defenseless girl in cold blood? Don't you realize we're the same sort of being, we two? Don't—don't you remember how we've been with each other all day?"
She paused. Roddie noticed that her eyes were dark and frightened, yet somehow soft, over scarlet cheeks. He had to look away. But he said nothing.
"Never mind!" Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? Not a bit logical. Emotion is for creating, and it's so much more logical to destroy, isn't it?"
She whirled back toward him, advancing as if she wanted to sink her teeth into his throat. "Go ahead. Get it over with—if you have the courage."
It was hard for Roddie to look away from that wrath-crimsoned face, but it was even harder to keep staring into the blaze of her eyes. He compromised by gazing out an opening at the gathering dusk. He thought for a long time before he decided to tuck his hammer away.
"It isn't reasonable to kill you now," he said. "Too dark. You can't possibly get down that half-ruined manway tonight, so let's see how I feel in the morning."
Ida began to weep again, and Roddie found it necessary to comfort her.
And by morning he knew he was a Man.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dr. Kometevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story is set in the future where Mars’ two moons Phobos and Deimos unexpectedly vanished, space travel exists, and monogamous marriages are lawful. Celeste Wolver talks to her friend Madge Carnap, who claims that the old book The Dance of The Planets predicted the moons’ disappearance. Wolver’s husband, one of the three ones she has, Theodor tries to explain that the book predicts only some events, but he and Celeste soon understand they don’t have strong arguments. Then Celeste and Theodor leave for a meeting regarding the recent events. While walking there, she shares her worries with him. Theodor says ESPs around the world have similar dreams. So, Rosalind, one of his wives, will bring their daughter Dotty to the meeting. Celeste, Rosalind, Frieda, Theodor, and Edmund were waiting only for the third husband, Ivan. Rosalind leaves to look for him, and the others start the meeting. They listen to recent news recordings: Mars’ moons disappeared; Kometevskyites - people that believe in the theory of The Dance of The Planets - demand some government's action. The news anchorman declares that Jupiter’s fourteen moons are not visible anymore. Rosalind comes back and says she only found Ivan’s briefcase covered in mud, with the phrase \"Going down” hastily written on it. They alert local agencies and talk about the project - Deep Shaft - Ivan was studying. The family splits up for a thirty-minute break, and Rosalind goes to where she found the briefcase. There the woman soon starts sinking into the ground. Rosalind realizes what happened to Ivan and leaves a glove pointing down as a sign; soon, her body is underground, and she keeps moving down mud and soil. Theodor, who went to the bar for the break, meets a colonel who tells him that there is a war between good and evil, and the planets are battleships controlled by divine power. The stories of these characters get interrupted by small extracts from Dotty’s dreams, where she calls herself a god, and says she and her friends have been found by their enemies and need to flee. Dotty wakes up and tells Celeste she is a god. Celeste goes back to everybody, and Edmund lists all the known facts. He says Deep Shaft found a metallic durasphere inside the Earth and proposes that other moons had it too. Ivan and Rosalind are drawn into the depth of the Earth, and in their dreams, all ESPs say they will leave in some great boats. Everybody understands that their planet is a camouflaged spaceship. Suddenly, Dotty says in an unfamiliar voice that their assumption is correct. The creature uses Dotty to tell them people were part of the camouflage they needed to hide from the enemies who don’t support mental privacy. Now they have to leave and can take only a few people. Suddenly, the creature says that their enemies changed, and now they don’t need to hide or destroy the planet. Rosalind and Ivan return.\n",
"The story follows a group of people that are engaged in a polyamorous marriage. They are 3 men and 3 women, who share a child. The story follows how they are reacting to astronomical phenomena. After Phobos and Demios, two of Mar's moons, disappear, Theodore and Celeste meet with another girl that says that everything that is happening was predicted by Dr. Kometevsky, and it was written in a book called “The Dance of the Planets”. When the six of them want to meet, they realize that one of them was missing, and the only thing that was left was his briefcase, with the message: Going Down. During this meeting, their little girl was having dreams in which she dreamed about a separate species. After one of them goes to a bar, the group learn that Earth was in fact created by a separate species that were being hunted, and that within Earth there is a spherical ship where the species reside. The species can communicate with humans that have Extra-Sensory Perception, and their child is one of them. Through their child, the group learn that the species’ hunters found them, and that they have to leave soon. The story ends with the group learning that the species wants to take the humans with them, and they accept that the species wants to help them. ",
"Madge Carnap shows a book, The Dance of the Planets, which looks old and terrifies Celeste Wolver. Celeste’s husband, Theodor, argues with Madge about the disappearance of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Madge believes the book author’s prediction, Dr. Kometevsky, that the Earth will take a leap in space, but Theodor and Celeste don’t believe her. They separate from each other, Madge goes to a meeting in a Buddist temple, and Theodor and Celeste go to a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes to investigate the materials about the phenomenon. Theodor and Celeste talk about the possible omen and their family situation on their way. Theodor also mentions that many people with Extra-Sensory Perception have been dreaming similarly. \n\nWhen Celeste and Theodor go into the committee room, Edmund, one of the husbands, suggests the family to start examining the microfilms without waiting for Ivan, the third husband of the family. Rosalind goes out to check for Ivan. Other people take the projectors out of their suitcases and check the microfilms while Celeste turns on the TV. They start to focus on the audio, which talks about the discovery of the debris of the moons in their original positions and Dr. Kometevsky’s call. When Rosalind returns with Ivan’s suitcase, she doesn’t hear the news that Jupiter’s fourteen moons have become invisible on the TV. They examine the briefcase, finding it eerily muddy with two letters. When they take a break from the examination, Theodor and Rosalind go out to drink. Rosalind is dragged underground to the core of Earth while trying to catch up with Theodor. Meanwhile, Theodor meets Colonel Fortescue in the Deep Space Bar, who tells him that God is a military strategist and the whole phenomenon is the war between the forces of good and evil when listening to the news about the movements of Jupiter’s moons and the unknown bodies in the space. Celeste watches Dotty in sleep. Edmund gathers everyone and starts to explain his discovery from all materials, including the metallic durashpere found in the center of Earth underground, the relation between the moons’ debris and the durashpere of them, Ivan’s and Rosalind’s disappearances, and the godlike creatures in ESPs dreams. After his explanation, the godlike creature communicates with them through Dotty’s body, explaining that Earth is their battleship, and that humans are their camouflage to escape from the pursuers. The pursuers have detected them, so Earth must be destroyed to let them grab the chance to flee. Only a small portion of humans will be saved to serve as the seed of the human race, such as Ivan and Rosalind. While the Wolver family is shocked by the truth, the godlike creatures negotiate with their pursuers. After a while, the godlike creature tells them that they are safe and will be brought to their place as the pursuers have changed to be good. In the end, Rosalind and Ivan are sent to the house, and the family gathers together.\n",
"Celeste Wolver is listening to her friend Madge Carnap hold a book called The Dance of Planets from the Twentieth Century. Her husband Theordor tries to argue that Kometevsky predicted the reshuffling of planets in a vague way, but Maggie Madge that it is undeniable Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. The story cuts to Celeste staring at a landscape, as Madge comes up to talk to her more about Dr. Kometevsky. Theodor says that the Mars Base would have noticed something, but Madge says that they are smaller than asteroids. Once she leaves, Celeste talks about how this feels like a warning for disaster in terms of complete security. She does not feel at rest because she has three husbands, and Theodor says that they are still family. Theodor talks about presenting evidence of dreams in ESPs at the meeting. The scene cuts to Dotty dreaming about being a God with god-like friends, and there are other gods out to stop them. Celeste and Theodor enter the committee room. Edmund is impatient to start without Ivan, but Rosalind says that she will go check on him. Celeste gets a newscast going, and everyone listens to the news about finding remnants of the two missing moons. There is also news about Kometevskyites staging helicopter processions to prepare for Earth’s leap through space. Rosalind suddenly walks in and shows everybody the microfilms that Ivan has used to handle. Dotty dreams again that the other gods are combing the whole universe to find them. Edmund says that they have done everything they can with finding Ivan, and he offers to take over the notes about the Deep Shaft. Dotty once again dreams about the other gods fearing that the escaped ones have found a door going out of the Universe. As Rosalind and Theodor step out, Celeste goes to see Dotty. As Rosalind goes to investigate Ivan’s briefcase, she notices that something is holding her feet ankle-deep in the path. Rosalind disappears too, as the bartender at the Deep Space Bar makes drinks for Theodor and Edmund. Colonel Fortescue believes that this is a war between good and evil. The scene then cuts to Celeste observing Dotty, as she says she is a god. Dotty asks if Celeste loves her, and she says that she does. Edmund calls everyone back together, piecing together the four clues to come to the conclusion that planets are a camouflaged fleet of gigantic spaceships. Dotty then comes, speaking with the voice of the god as it says that they will be escaping from the pursuers and destroying the planets because they have been found. As everybody contemplates what to do, the voice from Dotty suddenly says that their enemies have changed. They are no longer seeking to destroy them and that the planets are free because there is no need for them to be destroyed. Everybody feels much calmer, and Dotty says that she just had the funniest dream. "
] |
51353
|
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
|
Who’s Rosalind and what happens to her throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dr. Kometevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
Question:
Who’s Rosalind and what happens to her throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Rosalind is a member of the Wolves family, the wife of Theodor, Edmund, and Ivan. At the beginning of the story, she comes to the meeting of their family sub-committee. When Ivan doesn’t show up, Rosalind decides to go to the Deep Space Bar and try to find him. On her way back, she finds his briefcase half-buried in the dirt. It has a hastily written phrase “Going down” written on it. Shocked, she comes back and shows her findings to everybody. They alert the local agencies and create their family member’s description that is broadcast. They decide to take a small break, and Rosalind leaves right after Theodor. She doesn’t catch up with him and stops at the place where she found the briefcase. Suddenly, her feet get stuck, and her body starts sinking into the ground. She understands that the same thing happened to Ivan and decides to leave her glove to show what happened to her. Soon earth covers her head, and she keeps moving down through different soil levels. The temperature rises, and soon she ends up in a silver egg-shaped room where she meets Ivan. A voice inside their heads explains that their bodies will soon go through a painless process of separation into small atom-thick layers which will enable them to endure almost infinite accelerations, and their consciousness will be intact. They learn more about the Earth and its function. Soon, when the pursuers of the semi-god creatures tell them about the changes they made, Rosalind and Ivan are shot back to the surface. They walk back to their family.\n\n\n",
"Rosalind is one of the women who is a part of the Wolver family. She has 3 husbands and shares them with 3 other women. Rosalind is also the nurse of Dotty, the little girl who they all raise together. After they meet for a while, the group decides to have a break. During this break, Rosalind decides to search for more clues about the disappearance of their 6th member. Doing this, she gets sucked down into the Earth. She manages to leave her glove in the dirt facing down, which allows the group to understand what happened to her. At the end she and Ivan come back, and it is revealed that they went into the ship of the other species. ",
"Rosalind is the wife of Theodor, Ivan, and Edmund. She takes care of Dotty when Dotty is sleeping. She sets the mike so that Frieda, Dotty’s biological mother, can know when Dotty calls. Then, she checks when Ivan will come to the committee room when Edmund suggests starting the meeting without him. She comes back to the committee room with Ivan’s briefcase, finding it weirdly muddy with “Going Down”. When Theodor goes out to grab a drink, Rosalind follows him and ends up being dragged underground to the interior of Earth, leaving one of her gloves on the ground pointing downward. In the core of Earth, the godlike creatures’ battleship, she learns that she will be disintegrated into particles to store while staying alive. After the godlike creatures’ negotiation with their pursuers comes to a peaceful conclusion, Rosalind is sent to the house with her family.",
"Rosalind Wolver is one of the wives alongside Celeste and Frieda. Although she is not the mother of Dotty, she is noted to be the nurse of the little girl. She is described as a glitter of platinum against the darkness. When everyone is concerned as to why Ivan has not yet shown up to the meeting, Rosalind offers to go check on him. She later comes back, pale as a ghost, to show everybody what she has found from what remains of Ivan’s disappearance. After, Rosalind leaves with Theodor, but she goes back to the area where Ivan’s briefcase was. Although she tries to investigate further, something grabs at her feet and pulls her in. Rosalind feels the light of the path stay with her as she feels it grow hotter and hotter. Later, her and Ivan are sitting in an egg-shaped silver room that has no entrance or exit. A voice tells them that their bodies will be separated into layers one atom thick to be stored. However, this is a painless process and their consciousness will remain. Once the planets are no longer being destroyed, she comes back with Ivan through the outer door. Rosalind explains the experience as riding a rocket, and she is last telling Dotty that they have been dreaming instead of her. "
] |
51353
|
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
|
What is Celeste's attitude towards other members of her family and how does it change?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dr. Kometevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
Question:
What is Celeste's attitude towards other members of her family and how does it change?
Answer:
|
[
"From the beginning, Celeste seems to struggle with her complex marriage. She finds it hard to find complete security in three men simultaneously. In a crisis, it’s disturbing for her to have her source of security divided into three. She also cannot accept that Dotty is her daughter because the girl was born from Frieda. Celeste points out that the probability of Dotty being Theodor’s daughter is only one-third. She reckons that humanity might have gone too far with some things, including monogamous marriages. While in the committee room, she tries to determine if they are a true family or just experimenting with their relationship. The family members seem both familiar and unfamiliar to her. When she wants to check up on Dotty, she thinks that she is no one to the girl but still goes on. Dotty, after a small chat, makes Celeste say that she loves her. In the end, the reader understands that, no matter what Celeste’s feelings are, Dotty loves all three women and considers them mothers. ",
"Celeste seems to not be too happy with her marital situation. At the beginning, she tells one of her husbands that she doesn’t like that her happiness lies divided with 3 people, her husbands. She is also jealous that she is the one that has the least connection with their child, as the other women are the biological mother and the nurse of the little girl. Throughout the story, these same feelings are reflected, as Celeste seems to be wary when taking care of Dotty. At the end those feelings seem to take a back seat, as they were more preoccupied with the threat of the other species. ",
"Celeste shares three husbands, Theodor, Edmund, and Ivan, with the other two women, Rosalind and Frieda. Celeste is uncomfortable with one of her husbands, Theodor, as she talks about her insecurity of facing the unknown catastrophe in the future and having three husbands when she cannot find security from a single whole man who only belongs to her. She also does not see herself as belonging to the family as she separates herself from being the mother of a child, Dotty, born from Frieda’s womb. She feels uneasy and unsecured with the polygamous family as all her husbands share one-third of the chance to be the father or a husband of any child or wife in the family. She also feels distant from her family while knowing all their quirks and habits. When she goes to watch Dotty, she feels bitter and worried. When Dotty asks her whether she is her mother, Celeste smiles with uncertainty, questioning her feeling of separation from the family. After knowing the truth from Dotty’s mouth and experiencing the terror of losing her family, Celeste changes her attitude and feels belonging to her family.",
"Celeste is initially wary about having three husbands. She is aware that as a woman, she needs to find complete security. The complex marriages are stressful because each of her husbands only have one third of a security. She also does not regard Dotty too fondly, claiming that she is just Frieda’s daughter. Although Celeste is quite casual when Theodor kisses the other two wives, she begins to think later whether or not they are actually family. She wonders if they are truly a united group or just a bunch of silly adolescents playing around with marriage. Later, she does begin to warm up to Dotty after the child asks if she loves her. She says that she loves Dotty, despite the earlier feelings, and even tries to call out to her later. Although Celeste does not explicitly admit it, she does begin to grow closer and secure with the other family members. "
] |
51353
|
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
|
What’s the significance of Dotty’s dreams?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Dr. Kometevsky's Day by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
Question:
What’s the significance of Dotty’s dreams?
Answer:
|
[
"Throughout the entire story, the narrative gets interrupted by small parts of Dotty's dreams. She has extrasensory abilities, and the semi-god creatures use her and other ESPs to communicate with people. In her dreams, she tells the story of these creatures' life. She speaks about their belief in mental privacy and says that other gods do not want them to have private thoughts and decide to hunt them down. The creatures that value privacy of thoughts create inhabited planets and manage to hide for millions of years from the others. But now they have been found and need to flee again. Dotty’s dreams conceptually explain the origin of the planets of the Solar System and why those need to be destroyed now. Through her dreams, the creatures tell the Earth is their camouflaged spaceship, and they will soon need to live. \n",
"Dotty is one of the humans with Extra-Sensory Perception, which allows her to be a gateway of communication between the species that live within Earth and humans. A side effect of this is that she dreams a lot from the perspective of the other species. Her dreams are a reflection of what the species is feeling and what they are thinking with respect to their hunters. Dotty could understand that the species was being hunted, and could understand what they were thinking. At the end, Dotty wakes up and tells the family that she was dreaming.",
"Dotty is Frieda’s daughter who has extra-sensory perception. Dotty’s dream shows how the godlike creatures who live on Earth, their boat, escape from their pursuers and use life as camouflage to escape from the search. Her dream also shows what the godlike creatures think. In her dream, the godlike creatures express their desire for mental privacy that is not allowed by their other fellows. The godlike creatures leave their fellows, who are scared by them because of the unknown of their secret thoughts. When they used all their ways to get out of the universe, they had no choice but to hide under the camouflage disguised with life, and they succeeded. Dotty’s dream is significant because it shows how and why the godlike creatures fled from their point of view. It also indicates Dotty’s compatibility with the godlike creatures to allow them to talk with her family through her body.",
"Dotty’s dreams are significant because they tell the life of the god-like beings who have separated themselves from the rest of the group. Dotty’s dreams give insight to how the god-like beings came about, and how the start of the conflict between them and the rest of their race started. The dreams also reveal how the group managed to escape, creating great ships and camouflaging themselves so that their pursuers will not be able to catch up to them. Later, Dotty’s dreams also allow her to be controlled by one of the voices so that she is able to tell the rest of the Wolvers what will happen to the world and them because the pursuers have discovered where the rogue god-like group has been hiding. Dotty’s dreams also allow her to serve as a messenger between the two parties and inform them of what is happening in regards to the current situation. "
] |
51353
|
DR. KOMETEVSKY'S DAY
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction February 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Before science, there was superstition. After science, there will be ... what? The biggest, most staggering , most final fact of them all!
"But it's all predicted here! It even names this century for the next reshuffling of the planets."
Celeste Wolver looked up unwillingly at the book her friend Madge Carnap held aloft like a torch. She made out the ill-stamped title, The Dance of the Planets . There was no mistaking the time of its origin; only paper from the Twentieth Century aged to that particularly nasty shade of brown. Indeed, the book seemed to Celeste a brown old witch resurrected from the Last Age of Madness to confound a world growing sane, and she couldn't help shrinking back a trifle toward her husband Theodor.
He tried to come to her rescue. "Only predicted in the vaguest way. As I understand it, Kometevsky claimed, on the basis of a lot of evidence drawn from folklore, that the planets and their moons trade positions every so often."
"As if they were playing Going to Jerusalem, or musical chairs," Celeste chimed in, but she couldn't make it sound funny.
"Jupiter was supposed to have started as the outermost planet, and is to end up in the orbit of Mercury," Theodor continued. "Well, nothing at all like that has happened."
"But it's begun," Madge said with conviction. "Phobos and Deimos have disappeared. You can't argue away that stubborn little fact."
That was the trouble; you couldn't. Mars' two tiny moons had simply vanished during a period when, as was generally the case, the eyes of astronomy weren't on them. Just some hundred-odd cubic miles of rock—the merest cosmic flyspecks—yet they had carried away with them the security of a whole world.
Looking at the lovely garden landscape around her, Celeste Wolver felt that in a moment the shrubby hills would begin to roll like waves, the charmingly aimless paths twist like snakes and sink in the green sea, the sparsely placed skyscrapers dissolve into the misty clouds they pierced.
People must have felt like this , she thought, when Aristarches first hinted and Copernicus told them that the solid Earth under their feet was falling dizzily through space. Only it's worse for us, because they couldn't see that anything had changed. We can.
"You need something to cling to," she heard Madge say. "Dr. Kometevsky was the only person who ever had an inkling that anything like this might happen. I was never a Kometevskyite before. Hadn't even heard of the man."
She said it almost apologetically. In fact, standing there so frank and anxious-eyed, Madge looked anything but a fanatic, which made it much worse.
"Of course, there are several more convincing alternate explanations...." Theodor began hesitantly, knowing very well that there weren't. If Phobos and Deimos had suddenly disintegrated, surely Mars Base would have noticed something. Of course there was the Disordered Space Hypothesis, even if it was little more than the chance phrase of a prominent physicist pounded upon by an eager journalist. And in any case, what sense of security were you left with if you admitted that moons and planets might explode, or drop through unseen holes in space? So he ended up by taking a different tack: "Besides, if Phobos and Deimos simply shot off somewhere, surely they'd have been picked up by now by 'scope or radar."
"Two balls of rock just a few miles in diameter?" Madge questioned.
"Aren't they smaller than many of the asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I think' I'm right."
And of course she was.
She swung the book under her arm. "Whew, it's heavy," she observed, adding in slightly scandalized tones, "Never been microfilmed." She smiled nervously and looked them up and down. "Going to a party?" she asked.
Theodor's scarlet cloak and Celeste's green culottes and silver jacket justified the question, but they shook their heads.
"Just the normally flamboyant garb of the family," Celeste said, while Theodor explained, "As it happens, we're bound on business connected with the disappearance. We Wolvers practically constitute a sub-committee of the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes. And since a lot of varied material comes to our attention, we're going to see if any of it correlates with this bit of astronomical sleight-of-hand."
Madge nodded. "Give you something to do, at any rate. Well, I must be off. The Buddhist temple has lent us their place for a meeting." She gave them a woeful grin. "See you when the Earth jumps."
Theodor said to Celeste, "Come on, dear. We'll be late."
But Celeste didn't want to move too fast. "You know, Teddy," she said uncomfortably, "all this reminds me of those old myths where too much good fortune is a sure sign of coming disaster. It was just too much luck, our great-grandparents missing World III and getting the World Government started a thousand years ahead of schedule. Luck like that couldn't last, evidently. Maybe we've gone too fast with a lot of things, like space-flight and the Deep Shaft and—" she hesitated a bit—"complex marriages. I'm a woman. I want complete security. Where am I to find it?"
"In me," Theodor said promptly.
"In you?" Celeste questioned, walking slowly. "But you're just one-third of my husband. Perhaps I should look for it in Edmund or Ivan."
"You angry with me about something?"
"Of course not. But a woman wants her source of security whole. In a crisis like this, it's disturbing to have it divided."
"Well, we are a whole and, I believe, indivisible family," Theodor told her warmly. "You're not suggesting, are you, that we're going to be punished for our polygamous sins by a cosmic catastrophe? Fire from Heaven and all that?"
"Don't be silly. I just wanted to give you a picture of my feeling." Celeste smiled. "I guess none of us realized how much we've come to depend on the idea of unchanging scientific law. Knocks the props from under you."
Theodor nodded emphatically. "All the more reason to get a line on what's happening as quickly as possible. You know, it's fantastically far-fetched, but I think the experience of persons with Extra-Sensory Perception may give us a clue. During the past three or four days there's been a remarkable similarity in the dreams of ESPs all over the planet. I'm going to present the evidence at the meeting."
Celeste looked up at him. "So that's why Rosalind's bringing Frieda's daughter?"
"Dotty is your daughter, too, and Rosalind's," Theodor reminded her.
"No, just Frieda's," Celeste said bitterly. "Of course you may be the father. One-third of a chance."
Theodor looked at her sharply, but didn't comment. "Anyway, Dotty will be there," he said. "Probably asleep by now. All the ESPs have suddenly seemed to need more sleep."
As they talked, it had been growing darker, though the luminescence of the path kept it from being bothersome. And now the cloud rack parted to the east, showing a single red planet low on the horizon.
"Did you know," Theodor said suddenly, "that in Gulliver's Travels Dean Swift predicted that better telescopes would show Mars to have two moons? He got the sizes and distances and periods damned accurately, too. One of the few really startling coincidences of reality and literature."
"Stop being eerie," Celeste said sharply. But then she went on, "Those names Phobos and Deimos—they're Greek, aren't they? What do they mean?"
Theodor lost a step. "Fear and Terror," he said unwillingly. "Now don't go taking that for an omen. Most of the mythological names of major and minor ancient gods had been taken—the bodies in the Solar System are named that way, of course—and these were about all that were available."
It was true, but it didn't comfort him much.
I am a God , Dotty was dreaming, and I want to be by myself and think. I and my god-friends like to keep some of our thoughts secret, but the other gods have forbidden us to.
A little smile flickered across the lips of the sleeping girl, and the woman in gold tights and gold-spangled jacket leaned forward thoughtfully. In her dignity and simplicity and straight-spined grace, she was rather like a circus mother watching her sick child before she went out for the trapeze act.
I and my god-friends sail off in our great round silver boats , Dotty went on dreaming. The other gods are angry and scared. They are frightened of the thoughts we may think in secret. They follow us to hunt us down. There are many more of them than of us.
As Celeste and Theodor entered the committee room, Rosalind Wolver—a glitter of platinum against darkness—came in through the opposite door and softly shut it behind her. Frieda, a fair woman in blue robes, got up from the round table.
Celeste turned away with outward casualness as Theodor kissed his two other wives. She was pleased to note that Edmund seemed impatient too. A figure in close-fitting black, unrelieved except for two red arrows at the collar, he struck her as embodying very properly the serious, fateful temper of the moment.
He took two briefcases from his vest pocket and tossed them down on the table beside one of the microfilm projectors.
"I suggest we get started without waiting for Ivan," he said.
Frieda frowned anxiously. "It's ten minutes since he phoned from the Deep Space Bar to say he was starting right away. And that's hardly a two minutes walk."
Rosalind instantly started toward the outside door.
"I'll check," she explained. "Oh, Frieda, I've set the mike so you'll hear if Dotty calls."
Edmund threw up his hands. "Very well, then," he said and walked over, switched on the picture and stared out moodily.
Theodor and Frieda got out their briefcases, switched on projectors, and began silently checking through their material.
Celeste fiddled with the TV and got a newscast. But she found her eyes didn't want to absorb the blocks of print that rather swiftly succeeded each other, so, after a few moments, she shrugged impatiently and switched to audio.
At the noise, the others looked around at her with surprise and some irritation, but in a few moments they were also listening.
"The two rocket ships sent out from Mars Base to explore the orbital positions of Phobos and Deimos—that is, the volume of space they'd be occupying if their positions had remained normal—report finding masses of dust and larger debris. The two masses of fine debris are moving in the same orbits and at the same velocities as the two vanished moons, and occupy roughly the same volumes of space, though the mass of material is hardly a hundredth that of the moons. Physicists have ventured no statements as to whether this constitutes a confirmation of the Disintegration Hypothesis.
"However, we're mighty pleased at this news here. There's a marked lessening of tension. The finding of the debris—solid, tangible stuff—seems to lift the whole affair out of the supernatural miasma in which some of us have been tempted to plunge it. One-hundredth of the moons has been found.
"The rest will also be!"
Edmund had turned his back on the window. Frieda and Theodor had switched off their projectors.
"Meanwhile, Earthlings are going about their business with a minimum of commotion, meeting with considerable calm the strange threat to the fabric of their Solar System. Many, of course, are assembled in churches and humanist temples. Kometevskyites have staged helicopter processions at Washington, Peking, Pretoria, and Christiana, demanding that instant preparations be made for—and I quote—'Earth's coming leap through space.' They have also formally challenged all astronomers to produce an explanation other than the one contained in that strange book so recently conjured from oblivion, The Dance of the Planets .
"That about winds up the story for the present. There are no new reports from Interplanetary Radar, Astronomy, or the other rocket ships searching in the extended Mars volume. Nor have any statements been issued by the various groups working on the problem in Astrophysics, Cosmic Ecology, the Congress for the Discovery of New Purposes, and so forth. Meanwhile, however, we can take courage from the words of a poem written even before Dr. Kometevsky's book:
"This Earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;
From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel
Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship."
While the TV voice intoned the poem, growing richer as emotion caught it up, Celeste looked around her at the others. Frieda, with her touch of feminine helplessness showing more than ever through her business-like poise. Theodor leaning forward from his scarlet cloak thrown back, smiling the half-smile with which he seemed to face even the unknown. Black Edmund, masking a deep uncertainty with a strong show of decisiveness.
In short, her family. She knew their every quirk and foible. And yet now they seemed to her a million miles away, figures seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Were they really a family? Strong sources of mutual strength and security to each other? Or had they merely been playing family, experimenting with their notions of complex marriage like a bunch of silly adolescents? Butterflies taking advantage of good weather to wing together in a glamorous, artificial dance—until outraged Nature decided to wipe them out?
As the poem was ending, Celeste saw the door open and Rosalind come slowly in. The Golden Woman's face was white as the paths she had been treading.
Just then the TV voice quickened with shock. "News! Lunar Observatory One reports that, although Jupiter is just about to pass behind the Sun, a good coronagraph of the planet has been obtained. Checked and rechecked, it admits of only one interpretation, which Lunar One feels duty-bound to release. Jupiter's fourteen moons are no longer visible! "
The chorus of remarks with which the Wolvers would otherwise have received this was checked by one thing: the fact that Rosalind seemed not to hear it. Whatever was on her mind prevented even that incredible statement from penetrating.
She walked shakily to the table and put down a briefcase, one end of which was smudged with dirt.
Without looking at them, she said, "Ivan left the Deep Space Bar twenty minutes ago, said he was coming straight here. On my way back I searched the path. Midway I found this half-buried in the dirt. I had to tug to get it out—almost as if it had been cemented into the ground. Do you feel how the dirt seems to be in the leather, as if it had lain for years in the grave?"
By now the others were fingering the small case of microfilms they had seen so many times in Ivan's competent hands. What Rosalind said was true. It had a gritty, unwholesome feel to it. Also, it felt strangely heavy.
"And see what's written on it," she added.
They turned it over. Scrawled with white pencil in big, hasty, frantic letters were two words:
"Going down!"
The other gods , Dotty dreamt, are combing the whole Universe for us. We have escaped them many times, but now our tricks are almost used up. There are no doors going out of the Universe and our boats are silver beacons to the hunters. So we decide to disguise them in the only way they can be disguised. It is our last chance.
Edmund rapped the table to gain the family's attention. "I'd say we've done everything we can for the moment to find Ivan. We've made a thorough local search. A wider one, which we can't conduct personally, is in progress. All helpful agencies have been alerted and descriptions are being broadcast. I suggest we get on with the business of the evening—which may very well be connected with Ivan's disappearance."
One by one the others nodded and took their places at the round table. Celeste made a great effort to throw off the feeling of unreality that had engulfed her and focus attention on her microfilms.
"I'll take over Ivan's notes," she heard Edmund say. "They're mainly about the Deep Shaft."
"How far have they got with that?" Frieda asked idly. "Twenty-five miles?"
"Nearer thirty, I believe," Edmund answered, "and still going down."
At those last two words they all looked up quickly. Then their eyes went toward Ivan's briefcase.
Our trick has succeeded , Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.
Not my child , she thought bitterly. Frieda's her mother, Rosalind her nurse. I'm nothing at all. Just one of the husband's girl friends. A lady of uneasy virtue in a dissolving world.
But then she straightened her shoulders and went on.
Rosalind didn't catch up with Theodor. Her footsteps were silent and he never looked back along the path whose feeble white glow rose only knee-high, lighting a low strip of shrub and mossy tree trunk to either side, no more.
It was a little chilly. She drew on her gloves, but she didn't hurry. In fact, she fell farther and farther behind the dipping tail of his scarlet cloak and his plodding red shoes, which seemed to move disembodied, like those in the fairy tale.
When she reached the point where she had found Ivan's briefcase, she stopped altogether.
A breeze rustled the leaves, and, moistly brushing her cheek, brought forest scents of rot and mold. After a bit she began to hear the furtive scurryings and scuttlings of forest creatures.
She looked around her half-heartedly, suddenly realizing the futility of her quest. What clues could she hope to find in this knee-high twilight? And they'd thoroughly combed the place earlier in the night.
Without warning, an eerie tingling went through her and she was seized by a horror of the cold, grainy Earth underfoot—an ancestral terror from the days when men shivered at ghost stories about graves and tombs.
A tiny detail persisted in bulking larger and larger in her mind—the unnaturalness of the way the Earth had impregnated the corner of Ivan's briefcase, almost as if dirt and leather co-existed in the same space. She remembered the queer way the partly buried briefcase had resisted her first tug, like a rooted plant.
She felt cowed by the mysterious night about her, and literally dwarfed, as if she had grown several inches shorter. She roused herself and started forward.
Something held her feet.
They were ankle-deep in the path. While she looked in fright and horror, they began to sink still lower into the ground.
She plunged frantically, trying to jerk loose. She couldn't. She had the panicky feeling that the Earth had not only trapped but invaded her; that its molecules were creeping up between the molecules of her flesh; that the two were becoming one.
And she was sinking faster. Now knee-deep, thigh-deep, hip-deep, waist-deep. She beat at the powdery path with her hands and threw her body from side to side in agonized frenzy like some sinner frozen in the ice of the innermost circle of the ancients' hell. And always the sense of the dark, grainy tide rose inside as well as around her.
She thought, he'd just have had time to scribble that note on his briefcase and toss it away. She jerked off a glove, leaned out as far as she could, and made a frantic effort to drive its fingers into the powdery path. Then the Earth mounted to her chin, her nose, and covered her eyes.
She expected blackness, but it was as if the light of the path stayed with her, making a little glow all around. She saw roots, pebbles, black rot, worn tunnels, worms. Tier on tier of them, her vision penetrating the solid ground. And at the same time, the knowledge that these same sorts of things were coursing up through her.
And still she continued to sink at a speed that increased, as if the law of gravitation applied to her in a diminished way. She dropped from black soil through gray clay and into pale limestone.
Her tortured, rock-permeated lungs sucked at rock and drew in air. She wondered madly if a volume of air were falling with her through the stone.
A glitter of quartz. The momentary openness of a foot-high cavern with a trickle of water. And then she was sliding down a black basalt column, half inside it, half inside gold-flecked ore. Then just black basalt. And always faster.
It grew hot, then hotter, as if she were approaching the mythical eternal fires.
At first glance Theodor thought the Deep Space Bar was empty. Then he saw a figure hunched monkeylike on the last stool, almost lost in the blue shadows, while behind the bar, her crystal dress blending with the tiers of sparkling glasses, stood a grave-eyed young girl who could hardly have been fifteen.
The TV was saying, "... in addition, a number of mysterious disappearances of high-rating individuals have been reported. These are thought to be cases of misunderstanding, illusory apprehension, and impulse traveling—a result of the unusual stresses of the time. Finally, a few suggestible individuals in various parts of the globe, especially the Indian Peninsula, have declared themselves to be 'gods' and in some way responsible for current events.
"It is thought—"
The girl switched off the TV and took Theodor's order, explaining casually, "Joe wanted to go to a Kometevskyite meeting, so I took over for him." When she had prepared Theodor's highball, she announced,
"I'll have a drink with you gentlemen," and squeezed herself a glass of pomegranate juice.
The monkeylike figure muttered, "Scotch-and-soda," then turned toward Edmund and asked, "And what is your reaction to all this, sir?"
Theodor recognized the shrunken wrinkle-seamed face. It was Colonel Fortescue, a military antique long retired from the Peace Patrol and reputed to have seen actual fighting in the Last Age of Madness. Now, for some reason, the face sported a knowing smile.
Theodor shrugged. Just then the TV "big news" light blinked blue and the girl switched on audio. The Colonel winked at Theodor.
"... confirming the disappearance of Jupiter's moons. But two other utterly fantastic reports have just been received. First, Lunar Observatory One says that it is visually tracking fourteen small bodies which it believes may be the lost moons of Jupiter. They are moving outward from the Solar System at an incredible velocity and are already beyond the orbit of Saturn!"
The Colonel said, "Ah!"
"Second, Palomar reports a large number of dark bodies approaching the Solar System at an equally incredible velocity. They are at about twice the distance of Pluto, but closing in fast! We will be on the air with further details as soon as possible."
The Colonel said, "Ah-ha!"
Theodor stared at him. The old man's self-satisfied poise was almost amusing.
"Are you a Kometevskyite?" Theodor asked him.
The Colonel laughed. "Of course not, my boy. Those poor people are fumbling in the dark. Don't you see what's happened?"
"Frankly, no."
The Colonel leaned toward Theodor and whispered gruffly, "The Divine Plan. God is a military strategist, naturally."
Then he lifted the scotch-and-soda in his clawlike hand and took a satisfying swallow.
"I knew it all along, of course," he went on musingly, "but this last news makes it as plain as a rocket blast, at least to anyone who knows military strategy. Look here, my boy, suppose you were commanding a fleet and got wind of the enemy's approach—what would you do? Why, you'd send your scouts and destroyers fanning out toward them. Behind that screen you'd mass your heavy ships. Then—"
"You don't mean to imply—" Theodor interrupted.
The girl behind the bar looked at them both cryptically.
"Of course I do!" the Colonel cut in sharply. "It's a war between the forces of good and evil. The bright suns and planets are on one side, the dark on the other. The moons are the destroyers, Jupiter and Saturn are the big battleships, while we're on a heavy cruiser, I'm proud to say. We'll probably go into action soon. Be a corking fight, what? And all by divine strategy!"
He chuckled and took another big drink. Theodor looked at him sourly. The girl behind the bar polished a glass and said nothing.
Dotty suddenly began to turn and toss, and a look of terror came over her sleeping face. Celeste leaned forward apprehensively.
The child's lips worked and Celeste made out the sleepy-fuzzy words:
"They've found out where we're hiding. They're coming to get us. No! Please, no!"
Celeste's reactions were mixed. She felt worried about Dotty and at the same time almost in terror of her, as if the little girl were an agent of supernatural forces. She told herself that this fear was an expression of her own hostility, yet she didn't really believe it. She touched the child's hand.
Dotty's eyes opened without making Celeste feel she had quite come awake. After a bit she looked at Celeste and her little lips parted in a smile.
"Hello," she said sleepily. "I've been having such funny dreams." Then, after a pause, frowning, "I really am a god, you know. It feels very queer."
"Yes, dear?" Celeste prompted uneasily. "Shall I call Frieda?"
The smile left Dotty's lips. "Why do you act so nervous around me?" she asked. "Don't you love me, Mummy?"
Celeste started at the word. Her throat closed. Then, very slowly, her face broke into a radiant smile. "Of course I do, darling. I love you very much."
Dotty nodded happily, her eyes already closed again.
There was a sudden flurry of excited voices beyond the door. Celeste heard her name called. She stood up.
"I'm going to have to go out and talk with the others," she said. "If you want me, dear, just call."
"Yes, Mummy."
Edmund rapped for attention. Celeste, Frieda, and Theodor glanced around at him. He looked more frightfully strained, they realized, than even they felt. His expression was a study in suppressed excitement, but there were also signs of a knowledge that was almost too overpowering for a human being to bear.
His voice was clipped, rapid. "I think it's about time we stopped worrying about our own affairs and thought of those of the Solar System, partly because I think they have a direct bearing on the disappearances of Ivan end Rosalind. As I told you, I've been sorting out the crucial items from the material we've been presenting. There are roughly four of those items, as I see it. It's rather like a mystery story. I wonder if, hearing those four clues, you will come to the same conclusion I have."
The others nodded.
"First, there are the latest reports from Deep Shaft, which, as you know, has been sunk to investigate deep-Earth conditions. At approximately twenty-nine miles below the surface, the delvers have encountered a metallic obstruction which they have tentatively named the durasphere. It resists their hardest drills, their strongest corrosives. They have extended a side-tunnel at that level for a quarter of a mile. Delicate measurements, made possible by the mirror-smooth metal surface, show that the durasphere has a slight curvature that is almost exactly equal to the curvature of the Earth itself. The suggestion is that deep borings made anywhere in the world would encounter the durasphere at the same depth.
"Second, the movements of the moons of Mars and Jupiter, and particularly the debris left behind by the moons of Mars. Granting Phobos and Deimos had duraspheres proportional in size to that of Earth, then the debris would roughly equal in amount the material in those two duraspheres' rocky envelopes. The suggestion is that the two duraspheres suddenly burst from their envelopes with such titanic velocity as to leave those disrupted envelopes behind."
It was deadly quiet in the committee room.
"Thirdly, the disappearances of Ivan and Rosalind, and especially the baffling hint—from Ivan's message in one case and Rosalind's downward-pointing glove in the other—that they were both somehow drawn into the depths of the Earth.
"Finally, the dreams of the ESPs, which agree overwhelmingly in the following points: A group of beings separate themselves from a godlike and telepathic race because they insist on maintaining a degree of mental privacy. They flee in great boats or ships of some sort. They are pursued on such a scale that there is no hiding place for them anywhere in the universe. In some manner they successfully camouflage their ships. Eons pass and their still-fanatical pursuers do not penetrate their secret. Then, suddenly, they are detected."
Edmund waited. "Do you see what I'm driving at?" he asked hoarsely.
He could tell from their looks that the others did, but couldn't bring
themselves to put it into words.
"I suppose it's the time-scale and the value-scale that are so hard for
us to accept," he said softly. "Much more, even, than the size-scale.
The thought that there are creatures in the Universe to whom the whole
career of Man—in fact, the whole career of life—is no more than a few
thousand or hundred thousand years. And to whom Man is no more than a
minor stage property—a trifling part of a clever job of camouflage."
This time he went on, "Fantasy writers have at times hinted all sorts
of odd things about the Earth—that it might even be a kind of single
living creature, or honeycombed with inhabited caverns, and so on.
But I don't know that any of them have ever suggested that the Earth,
together with all the planets and moons of the Solar System, might
be...."
In a whisper, Frieda finished for him, "... a camouflaged fleet of
gigantic spherical spaceships."
" Your guess happens to be the precise truth. "
At that familiar, yet dreadly unfamiliar voice, all four of them swung
toward the inner door. Dotty was standing there, a sleep-stupefied
little girl with a blanket caught up around her and dragging behind.
Their own daughter. But in her eyes was a look from which they cringed.
She said, "I am a creature somewhat older than what your geologists
call the Archeozoic Era. I am speaking to you through a number of
telepathically sensitive individuals among your kind. In each case my
thoughts suit themselves to your level of comprehension. I inhabit the
disguised and jetless spaceship which is your Earth."
Celeste swayed a step forward. "Baby...." she implored.
Dotty went on, without giving her a glance, "It is true that we planted
the seeds of life on some of these planets simply as part of our
camouflage, just as we gave them a suitable environment for each. And
it is true that now we must let most of that life be destroyed. Our
hiding place has been discovered, our pursuers are upon us, and we must
make one last effort to escape or do battle, since we firmly believe
that the principle of mental privacy to which we have devoted our
existence is perhaps the greatest good in the whole Universe.
"But it is not true that we look with contempt upon you. Our whole race
is deeply devoted to life, wherever it may come into being, and it is
our rule never to interfere with its development. That was one of
the reasons we made life a part of our camouflage—it would make our
pursuers reluctant to examine these planets too closely.
"Yes, we have always cherished you and watched your evolution with
interest from our hidden lairs. We may even unconsciously have shaped
your development in certain ways, trying constantly to educate you away
from war and finally succeeding—which may have given the betraying
clue to our pursuers.
"Your planets must be burst asunder—this particular planet in the
area of the Pacific—so that we may have our last chance to escape.
Even if we did not move, our pursuers would destroy you with us. We
cannot invite you inside our ships—not for lack of space, but because
you could never survive the vast accelerations to which you would be
subjected. You would, you see, need very special accommodations, of
which we have enough only for a few.
"Those few we will take with us, as the seed from which a new human
race may—if we ourselves somehow survive—be born."
Rosalind and Ivan stared dumbly at each other across the egg-shaped
silver room, without apparent entrance or exit, in which they were
sprawled. But their thoughts were no longer of thirty-odd mile
journeys down through solid earth, or of how cool it was after the
heat of the passage, or of how grotesque it was to be trapped here,
the fragment of a marriage. They were both listening to the voice that
spoke inside their minds.
"In a few minutes your bodies will be separated into layers one atom
thick, capable of being shelved or stored in such a way as to endure
almost infinite accelerations. Single cells will cover acres of space.
But do not be alarmed. The process will be painless and each particle
will be catalogued for future assembly. Your consciousness will endure
throughout the process."
Rosalind looked at her gold-shod toes. She was wondering, will they go
first, or my head? Or will I be peeled like an apple?
She looked at Ivan and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Up in the committee room, the other Wolvers slumped around the table.
Only little Dotty sat straight and staring, speechless and unanswering,
quite beyond their reach, like a telephone off the hook and with the
connection open, but no voice from the other end.
They had just switched off the TV after listening to a confused
medley of denials, prayers, Kometevskyite chatterings, and a few
astonishingly realistic comments on the possibility of survival.
These last pointed out that, on the side of the Earth opposite the
Pacific, the convulsions would come slowly when the entombed spaceship
burst forth—provided, as seemed the case, that it moved without jets
or reaction.
It would be as if the Earth's vast core simply vanished. Gravity would
diminish abruptly to a fraction of its former value. The empty envelope
of rock and water and air would slowly fall together, though at the
same time the air would begin to escape from the debris because there
would no longer be the mass required to hold it.
However, there might be definite chances of temporary and even
prolonged survival for individuals in strong, hermetically sealed
structures, such as submarines and spaceships. The few spaceships on
Earth were reported to have blasted off, or be preparing to leave, with
as many passengers as could be carried.
But most persons, apparently, could not contemplate action of any sort.
They could only sit and think, like the Wolvers.
A faint smile relaxed Celeste's face. She was thinking, how beautiful!
It means the death of the Solar System, which is a horrifying
subjective concept. Objectively, though, it would be a more awesome
sight than any human being has ever seen or ever could see. It's an
absurd and even brutal thing to wish—but I wish I could see the whole
cataclysm from beginning to end. It would make death seem very small, a
tiny personal event.
Dotty's face was losing its blank expression, becoming intent and
alarmed.
"We are in contact with our pursuers," she said in the
familiar-unfamiliar voice. "Negotiations are now going on. There
seems to be—there is a change in them. Where they were harsh and
vindictive before, they now are gentle and conciliatory." She paused,
the alarm on her childish features pinching into anxious uncertainty.
"Our pursuers have always been shrewd. The change in them may be false,
intended merely to lull us into allowing them to come close enough to
destroy us. We must not fall into the trap by growing hopeful...."
They leaned forward, clutching hands, watching the little face as
though it were a television screen. Celeste had the wild feeling that
she was listening to a communique from a war so unthinkably vast and
violent, between opponents so astronomically huge and nearly immortal,
that she felt like no more than a reasoning ameba ... and then realized
with an explosive urge to laugh that that was exactly the situation.
"No!" said Dotty. Her eyes began to glow. "They have changed! During
the eons in which we lay sealed away and hidden from them, knowing
nothing of them, they have rebelled against the tyranny of a communal
mind to which no thoughts are private ... the tyranny that we ourselves
fled to escape. They come not to destroy us, but to welcome us back to
a society that we and they can make truly great!"
Frieda collapsed to a chair, trembling between laughter and hysterical
weeping. Theodor looked as blank as Dotty had while waiting for words
to speak. Edmund sprang to the picture window, Celeste toward the TV
set.
Climbing shakily out of the chair, Frieda stumbled to the picture
window and peered out beside Edmund. She saw lights bobbing along the
paths with a wild excitement.
On the TV screen, Celeste watched two brightly lit ships spinning in
the sky—whether human spaceships or Phobos and Deimos come to help
Earth rejoice, she couldn't tell.
Dotty spoke again, the joy in her strange voice forcing them to turn.
"And you, dear children, creatures of our camouflage, we welcome
you—whatever your future career on these planets or like ones—into
the society of enlightened worlds! You need not feel small and alone
and helpless ever again, for we shall always be with you!"
The outer door opened. Ivan and Rosalind reeled in, drunkenly smiling,
arm in arm.
"Like rockets," Rosalind blurted happily. "We came through the
durasphere and solid rock ... shot up right to the surface."
"They didn't have to take us along," Ivan added with a bleary grin.
"But you know that already, don't you? They're too good to let you live
in fear, so they must have told you by now."
"Yes, we know," said Theodor. "They must be almost godlike in their
goodness. I feel ... calm."
Edmund nodded soberly. "Calmer than I ever felt before. It's knowing, I
suppose, that—well, we're not alone."
Dotty blinked and looked around and smiled at them all with a wholly
little-girl smile.
"Oh, Mummy," she said, and it was impossible to tell whether she spoke
to Frieda or Rosalind or Celeste, "I've just had the funniest dream."
"No, darling," said Rosalind gently, "it's we who had the dream. We've
just awakened."
|
What is the relationship between Edna and Harry?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Breakdown by Herbert D. Kastle.
Relevant chunks:
BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
Question:
What is the relationship between Edna and Harry?
Answer:
|
[
"Harry and Edna Burr are married. Initially, Edna is very concerned about Harry because of the strange memories that he experiences. She tries to plead with him to see a doctor, but he refuses to believe it. Harry is seen getting impatient with Edna, mainly because she is confused about the questions or people that he talks about. Even though she is concerned, Edna is good at comforting Harry. When he complains about the lack of meat, she tells him that they will have some multi-pro for lunch. The two of them split their duties as well, with Edna doing a lot of the housework and Harry doing the more manual labor. She also tries to suggest activities to do, such as asking what’s on the channel for this week. Edna loves Harry very much, but she does encourage him to seek a doctor to help his mental health. At the end, when Harry returns from his treatment, she asks if he has gone out to break any regulations. He only laughs and says he would rather kill a pig than do that. ",
"Harry and Edna are husband and wife who both live on their farm, next to their neighbours Walt and Gloria. Harry appears to be increasing confused and distorted in his memory of the places, people and things around. Because of this, Edna is worried about him and wishes for him to visit the doctor's office. Harry constantly refuses her request, for he is unwilling to admit anything is wrong with him and that he does not want to see an unfamiliar doctor. Supposedly the two of them have a son together named Davie. However, when Harry accidentally mentions him as a figment of his dream, Edna doesn't correct him that he passed or of his existence, and so Harry assumes from her that Davie was not real. \n\nWhen the neighbors come over for dinner, Harry slips up again and Edna begins to cry. He decides to go out for a walk and potentially sleep there like he had done as a kid as to not further worry her. \n\nAt the end of the story after his visit to his doctor, Edna is relieved. She expresses that she thought Harry may have gone off somewhere - but after gone to the doctors - Harry would never have dreamt to do such a thing. ",
"Harry and Edna are in a marital relationship. Harry is Edna’s husband, and Edna is Harry’s wife. Edna cares for Harry a lot. Whenever Harry behaves as if he forgets the reality and sinks into the seemingly fake memory, she always asks him to see the doctor even though he never accepts her advice. Harry gains a lot of information about the present from Edna as he cannot remembers a lot of things, or to say, his memory is mismatched with what Edna has told him. Harry cherishes Edna so much that he can’t bear to see her cry. When Edna was crying, he would speak softly and kiss her.",
"Throughout the story, Edna becomes more and more upset because of Harry’s strange behavior. At the beginning, after Harry mentions their non-existent son, meat, and their dead family doctor, she starts crying and asks him to see a doctor. He tells her he’s still half-asleep. During breakfast, he gets irritated by how she calmly accepts the rations and the state limitations on food and travel. He makes several unordinary remarks during the day and makes seemingly strange comments about their neighbors' children. After their friends leave, she starts crying and asking Harry to see a doctor. Harry cannot stand her crying and goes for a walk. In the end, their relationship is supposed to get better since doctor Hamming improved his mental state."
] |
51662
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BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
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What are some of the government regulations that are imposed in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Breakdown by Herbert D. Kastle.
Relevant chunks:
BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
Question:
What are some of the government regulations that are imposed in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"One of the government restrictions that Edna reminds Harry about is the rationing of meat. Due to the crisis in the country, there is a shortage of meat. Instead of actual meat, most people eat multi-pro, which is similar to spam. The government also sets up boundaries for the residents to stay inside of, and they are not allowed to go past these regulations or else the police will come. The government also takes care of supplies, and most residents just have to write down what they want and pay a bill. In terms of money, the government takes care of it as well each week. Each farm receives the same number of animals because government agents paid flat rates. When Harry finds the stock of grain, he notes that the government has enough to keep going for a few years. Television is also restricted to old movies, playing only on one channel from nine to eleven at night. Later, it is revealed that these restrictions are imposed to keep the people alive on the ark long enough until they can begin to expand civilization again. ",
"Some of the government regulations included rationing the food. This included not being able to butcher their own meat, but rather, having multi-pro. There was also a regulation about the type of farming allowed. Despite all the land, the government would pay the farmers for letting the fields remain empty as long as they only farm vegetables, and not wheat or corn. \n\nAdditionally, there are regulations on travel and gas. You were not able to go further than your neighbor's house. There is also an education regulation that says children should be at least 5 years and 9 months old before beginning to learn and read through a kindergarten book. ",
"The travel regulation restricts the area that people can travel to, which means their own houses and the closest neighbor's house. Whoever breaks the travel regulation will be sent to see the doctor. People buy their living necessities through delivery weekly by the rationing regulation. The farming regulations prohibit the plantation of wheat and corn, only allowing vegetables to be grown, resulting in many fields fallow. People would get compensated by the government for not planting wheat or corn. The rationing regulation allocates foods and living necessities for each family, regulates the supplies people can get, and prohibits people from butchering their livestock. Everyone has the same amount of livestock. Gas and water are also rationed that each family can only have a sink of water for dishes each day and a tub of bath water twice a week. The television regulation limits the channel to one, restricts the watching time to only nine to eleven at night, and constrains the audience to watch the listed movies only. Emergency Education Regulations claim that children should be at least five years nine months old to learn kindergarten books.",
"They cannot cultivate wheat and corn, and these fields are not in use. There are meat rations that significantly limit the amount of meat one household can consume. Harry also thinks about the travel regulations - he can't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They live a little more than a mile away from Harry and Edna. There is gas rationing. The livestock is controlled by the government, too - every household has the same number of chickens, sheep, cows, etc. We learn about the Emergency Education Regulations - every child should be five years nine months old before embarking on a kindergarten book. "
] |
51662
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BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Breakdown by Herbert D. Kastle.
Relevant chunks:
BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
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[
"The story is set on an ark that Doctor Hamming put money into creating. Although it resembles Iowa, the residents are fooled to believe that it is indeed Iowa. Each of the residents have their own farm and land area, and they are restricted to only staying inside a certain area. For the Burrs, they cannot go beyond the Shanks’ place. Harry’s farm area has his house, an area for the livestock, and a tractor shed that was supposed to be torn off. Their area also has a supply bin that is shaped like an old-fashioned wood bin for deliveries from the government. The land they live on is also shared with the Franklins. When Harry takes Plum out for a ride, they go up north past the Franklins to where the Bessers should be. Then, they reach a small Pangborn farm. Beyond Pangborn, there lies old Wallace Elverton’s place, which is known as the biggest farm in the country. There is barbed wire in this area, and he walks past it. Slowly, the earth becomes sand and then wood. There are also colored folks living here, when there shouldn’t have been, and a place called Piney Woods exists as well. The place where Doctor Hamming lives is two miles past Dugan’s farm. It resembles a hospital, but there is nobody else inside of it. ",
"This story is set in Iowa, perhaps a town, specifically, the farmhouse of Edna and Harry. This farmhouse had fields of land, a thriving vegetable patch, and a barn. Towards the road, there is a wooden supply in for deliveries and payment by the government. \n\nWhile on the horse, Harry encounters a farm fenced off with barbed wire. As he walked, the ground changed from beneath him. It went from earth to sand to wood. Here, he found a waist-high metal that when overlooked, revealed endless salty water - the ocean. \n\nAt the end of the story, Harry visits the doctor's place which is located in a new house past Dugan's farm. The house had long passageways and many. stairways, with gray walls and cold lighting. In there, there were windowless rooms. ",
"The story happens on a wooden ark floating on the ocean. The first scene is in Harry’s two-floor house. There are bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom in his house. There is a blue armchair, a sofa, and a TV in the living room. Outside the house is the barn with the floor strewn with hay. Across the yard, there is a pigpen with four pigs inside. Behind the house, there is a half-acre truck farm. Across the front yard, there lies a wooden supply bin by the road. The road is empty, along which are unplanted fields. Ten-foot heavy steel mesh on top with three-foot barbed wire surrounds all the houses on the wooden ark. Near the edge of the ark, the floor is covered with hard-packed sand. On the edge of the ark is a metal railing circling the ark. The doctor’s house is big. Inside the house, at the end of a central passage and dozens of doors on both sides, a stairway downwards to at least two hundred yards depth, where the end leads to a ramp going upward. The grey plaster walls, black floors, and white lighting set a dull tone. An engine for the ark to move lies in the most central and deepest part of the house.",
"Harry and Edna think that they live in Iowa’s countryside. In the morning, they have a small conversation in the bedroom. Then Harry goes to the bathroom to wash, then to the kitchen. After eating, he spends some time in the barn and goes to the truck behind the house. Later, harry picks up a delivery in the front yard. He takes a nap and then eats in the kitchen. In the evening, their guests are seated on the sofa, and Edna is in the blue armchair. Later, Harry rides to the north. He trespasses on Phineas Grotton Farm. Then, he climbs over a high fence, and soon notices sand and later wood flooring beneath his feet. Finally, he sees the ocean. He runs back to his horse and decides to ride in the opposite direction along a residential road. He again reaches the railing and the ocean. The police officer gets him to doctor Hamming. This building is big: they go along the central passageway and see dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways go down from it in at least three places that Harry can see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls, black floors, and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. He comes into a windowless room with a medical chair and a set of radios. At the end, after learning that he lives on an ark and immediately forgetting this, Harry comes back home.\n\n\n "
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51662
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BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
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Who is Doctor Hamming, and what are his traits?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Breakdown by Herbert D. Kastle.
Relevant chunks:
BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
Question:
Who is Doctor Hamming, and what are his traits?
Answer:
|
[
"Doctor Hamming is first described by Edna as someone who can treat Harry’s so-called “mental problems”. She insists for Harry to go see him multiple times, but Harry refuses every time. Finally, when Harry is escorted by the policemen does he go meet Doctor Hamming in person. In person, Doctor Hamming is a thin little man with a bald head and framed glasses. He also wears a white coat and looks about one hundred years old. He lives with his two sons, and his wife is not around anymore. His son’s names are Pete and Stan. Doctor Hamming is a very stressed person, constantly trying to manage the ark. He is also impatient as well, raising his voice when Harry asks him about his dead son. However, although the doctor is impatient, he is very knowledgeable in his field as well. He predicted that people will begin to die from a disaster and invested a lot of his money to build the ark. He has exceptional planning skills, picking out the farmers in the rural areas as people to continue living on the ark because he knows how important the farmers are. The doctor’s treatments are very successful as well, capable of completely erasing Harry Burr’s conflicting memories and making him forget that they are on an ark. ",
"Dr. Hamming is the only doctor in the town, as the other Dr. Timkins had previously died. He is described to be a thin little man, bald, wearing frameless glasses and overall looking to be frail and at least a hundred years old. \n\nHe is weary and tired as he and his two sons are seemingly in charge of up-keeping the entire health, wealth and charade of the townspeople. He is compassionate as a doctor and has a deep passion for survival. He is generous, for he had saved a few of the remaining people alive after the bomb to try and find uncontaminated land to rebuild life on. \n\nHe describes himself as insane. Insane to be playing God, to be plagued with the memories of what actually happened, and to have been searching for habitable land for years on end. ",
"Doctor Hamming is the only doctor on the ark who is on the duty of maintaining the ark, finding the habitable land, and brainwashing the farmers on the ark. He lives in the new house two miles away from Dugan’s farm. He is thin, bald, and little, wearing frameless glasses and a white coat. He looks very old. He has two sons, Petey and Stan. His wife lost her mind a long time ago before he had the technique to help her. He is stressed because of the enormous pressures of running a world by himself and his sons without much financial support. He is insane because he and his sons have been playing god to maintain good social conditions on the ark for three years, searching for habitable lands desperately, and surrounded by people who know nothing. He is careful as he makes sure everyone on the ark knows nothing about the truth but he and his sons only to prevent possible chaos and terror. He is thoughtful of his plan as he knows what humans need to survive on a single ark and organize things in a necessary order. After the explosion, he picks up the remaining alive farmers to sustain the human race. He is desperate as they cannot find any pure habitable land for years.",
"Doctor Hamming is a medical specialist and a scientist. He saves several hundred people by relocating them to his ark with uncontaminated soil. He is resilient and responsible because he managed to gather the survivors and build a self-sustaining community that lives after the bombing. The doctor is lonely: he tries to talk to Harry, the only sane person besides him and his two sons, while the man’s memory is not under any influence. He is pragmatic and cautious - the doctor started building his ark before the Holocaust started. He was planning the construction, ready for the following catastrophe. He wants to live and to let people live - that's why he spent the last three years managing his mini-world and waiting for some land to become habitable again. "
] |
51662
|
BREAKDOWN
By HERBERT D. KASTLE
Illustrated by COWLES
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine June 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He didn't know exactly when it had started, but it had been going on for weeks. Edna begged him to see the doctor living in that new house two miles past Dugan's farm, but he refused. He point-blank refused to admit he was sick that way—in the head!
Of course, a man could grow forgetful. He had to admit there were moments when he had all sorts of mixed-up memories and thoughts in his mind. And sometimes—like right now, lying in bed beside Edna, watching the first hint of light touch the windows—he began sweating with fear. A horrible, gut-wrenching fear, all the more horrible because it was based on nothing.
The chicken-run came alive; the barn followed minutes later. There were chores to do, the same chores he'd done all his forty-one years. Except that now, with the new regulations about wheat and corn, he had only a vegetable patch to farm. Sure, he got paid for letting the fields remain empty. But it just didn't seem right, all that land going to waste....
Davie. Blond hair and a round, tanned face and strong arms growing stronger each day from helping out after school.
He turned and shook Edna. "What happened to Davie?"
She cleared her throat, mumbled, "Huh? What happened to who?"
"I said, what...." But then it slipped away. Davie? No, that was part of a dream he'd had last week. He and Edna had no children.
He felt the fear again, and got up fast to escape it. Edna opened her eyes as soon as his weight left the bed. "Like hotcakes for breakfast?"
"Eggs," he said. "Bacon." And then, seeing her face change, he remembered. "Course," he muttered. "Can't have bacon. Rationed."
She was fully awake now. "If you'd only go see Dr. Hamming, Harry. Just for a checkup. Or let me call him so he could—"
"You stop that! You stop that right now, and for good! I don't want to hear no more about doctors. I get laid up, I'll call one. And it won't be that Hamming who I ain't never seen in my life! It'll be Timkins, who took care'n us and brought our son into the world and...."
She began to cry, and he realized he'd said something crazy again. They had no son, never had a son. And Timkins—he'd died and they'd gone to his funeral. Or so Edna said.
He himself just couldn't remember it.
He went to the bed and sat down beside her. "Sorry. That was just a dream I had. I'm still half asleep this morning. Couldn't fall off last night, not till real late. Guess I'm a little nervous, what with all the new regulations and not working regular. I never meant we had a son." He waited then, hoping she'd say they had had a son, and he'd died or gone away. But of course she didn't.
He went to the bathroom and washed. By the time he came to the kitchen, Edna had hotcakes on a plate and coffee in a cup. He sat down and ate. Part way through the meal, he paused. "Got an awful craving for meat," he said. "Goddam those rations! Man can't even butcher his own stock for his own table!"
"We're having meat for lunch," she said placatingly. "Nice cut of multi-pro."
"Multi-pro," he scoffed. "God knows what's in it. Like spam put through a grinder a hundred times and then baked into slabs. Can't hardly taste any meat there."
"Well, we got no choice. Country's on emergency rations. The current crisis, you know."
The way she said it irritated him. Like it was Scripture; like no one could question one word of it without being damned to Hell. He finished quickly and without speaking went on out to the barn.
He milked and curried and fed and cleaned, and still was done inside of two hours. Then he walked slowly, head down, across the hay-strewn floor. He stopped, put out his hand as if to find a pole or beam that was too familiar to require raising his eyes, and almost fell as he leaned in that direction. Regaining his balance after a sideward staggering shuffle, he looked around, startled. "Why, this ain't the way I had my barn...."
He heard his own voice, and stopped. He fought the flash of senseless panic. Of course this was the way he'd had his barn built, because it was his barn!
He rubbed his hard hands together and said aloud, "Get down to the patch. Them tomatoes need fertilizer for tang." He walked outside and took a deep breath. Air was different, wasn't it? Sweet and pure and clean, like country air always was and always would be; but still, different somehow. Maybe sharper. Or was sharp the word? Maybe....
He went quickly across the yard, past the pig-pen—he'd had twelve pigs, hadn't he? Now he had four—behind the house to where the half-acre truck farm lay greening in the sun. He got to work. Sometime later, Edna called to him. "Delivery last night, Harry. I took some. Pick up rest?"
"Yes," he shouted.
She disappeared.
He walked slowly back to the house. As he came into the front yard, moving toward the road and the supply bin, something occurred to him. The car. He hadn't seen the old Chevvy in ... how long? It'd be nice to take a ride to town, see a movie, maybe have a few beers.
No. It was against the travel regulations. He couldn't go further than Walt and Gloria Shanks' place. They couldn't go further than his. And the gas rationing. Besides, he'd sold the car, hadn't he? Because it was no use to him lying in the tractor shed.
He whirled, staring out across the fields to his left. Why, the tractor shed had stood just fifty feet from the house!
No, he'd torn it down. The tractor was in town, being overhauled and all. He was leaving it there until he had use for it.
He went on toward the road, his head beginning to throb. Why should a man his age, hardly sick at all since he was a kid, suddenly start losing hold this way? Edna was worried. The Shanks had noticed it too.
He was at the supply bin—like an old-fashioned wood bin; a box with a sloping flap lid. Deliveries of food and clothing and home medicines and other things were left here. You wrote down what you needed, and they left it—or whatever they allowed you—with a bill. You paid the bill by leaving money in the bin, and the next week you found a receipt and your new stuff and your new bill. And almost always you found some money from the government, for not planting wheat or not planting corn. It came out just about even.
He hauled out a sack of flour, half the amount of sugar Edna had ordered, some dried fruit, a new Homekit Medicine Shelf. He carried it into the house, and noticed a slip of paper pinned to the sugar bag. A television program guide.
Edna hustled over excitedly. "Anything good on this week, Harry?"
He looked down the listings, and frowned. "All old movies. Still only one channel. Still only from nine to eleven at night." He gave it to her, turned away; then stopped and waited. He'd said the same thing last week. And she had said the films were all new to her.
She said it now. "Why Harry, I've never seen this movie with Clark Gable. Nor the comedy with Red Skeleton. Nor the other five neither."
"I'm gonna lie down," he said flatly. He turned and stepped forward, and found himself facing the stove. Not the door to the hall; the stove. "But the door...." he began. He cut himself short. He turned and saw the door a few feet to the left, beside the table. He went there and out and up the stairs (they too had moved; they too weren't right) and into the bedroom and lay down. The bedroom was wrong. The bed was wrong. The windows were wrong.
The world was wrong! Lord, the whole damned world was wrong!
Edna didn't wake him, so they had a late lunch. Then he went back to the barn and let the four cows and four sheep and two horses into the pastures. Then he checked to see that Edna had fed the chickens right. They had only a dozen or so now.
When had he sold the rest? And when had he sold his other livestock?
Or had they died somehow? A rough winter? Disease?
He stood in the yard, a tall, husky man with pale brown hair and a face that had once been long, lean and strong and was now only long and lean. He blinked gray eyes and tried hard to remember, then turned and went to the house. Edna was soaking dishes in the sink, according to regulations—one sinkful of dishwater a day. And one tub of bath water twice a week.
She was looking at him. He realized his anger and confusion must be showing. He managed a smile. "You remember how much we got for our livestock, Edna?"
"Same as everyone else," she said. "Government agents paid flat rates."
He remembered then, or thought he did. The headache was back. He went upstairs and slept again, but this time he had dreams, many of them, and all confused and all frightening. He was glad to get up. And he was glad to hear Walt and Gloria talking to Edna downstairs.
He washed his face, combed his hair and went down. Walt and Gloria were sitting on the sofa, Edna in the blue armchair. Walt was saying he'd gotten the new TV picture tube he'd ordered. "Found it in the supply bin this morning. Spent the whole day installing it according to the book of directions."
Harry said hi and they all said hi and he sat down and they talked about TV and gardens and livestock. Then Harry said, "How's Penny?"
"Fine," Gloria answered. "I'm starting her on the kindergarten book next week."
"She's five already?" Harry asked.
"Almost six," Walt said. "Emergency Education Regulations state that the child should be five years nine months old before embarking on kindergarten book."
"And Frances?" Harry asked. "Your oldest? She must be starting high...." He stopped, because they were all staring at him, and because he couldn't remember Frances clearly. "Just a joke," he said, laughing and rising. "Let's eat. I'm starved."
They ate in the kitchen. They talked—or rather Edna, Gloria and Walt did. Harry nodded and said uh-huh and used his mouth for chewing.
Walt and Gloria went home at ten-fifteen. They said goodbye at the door and Harry walked away. He heard Gloria whispering something about Doctor Hamming.
He was sitting in the living room when Edna came in. She was crying.
"Harry, please see the doctor."
He got up. "I'm going out. I might even sleep out!"
"But why, Harry, why?"
He couldn't stand to see her crying. He went to her, kissed her wet cheek, spoke more softly. "It'll do me good, like when I was a kid."
"If you say so, Harry."
He left quickly. He went outside and across the yard to the road. He looked up it and down it, to the north and to the south. It was a bright night with moon and stars, but he saw nothing, no one. The road was empty. It was always empty, except when Walt and Gloria walked over from their place a mile or so south. But once it hadn't been empty. Once there'd been cars, people....
He had to do something. Just sitting and looking at the sky wouldn't help him. He had to go somewhere, see someone.
He went to the barn and looked for his saddle. There was no saddle. But he'd had one hanging right behind the door. Or had he?
He threw a blanket over Plum, the big mare, and tied it with a piece of wash line. He used another piece for a bridle, since he couldn't find that either, and didn't bother making a bit. He mounted, and Plum moved out of the barn and onto the road. He headed north, toward town.
Then he realized he couldn't go along the road this way. He'd be reported. Breaking travel regulations was a serious offense. He didn't know what they did to you, but it wasn't anything easy like a fine.
He cut into an unfenced, unplanted field.
His headache was back, worse now than it had ever been. His entire head throbbed, and he leaned forward and put his cheek against Plum's mane. The mare whinnied uneasily, but he kicked her sides and she moved forward. He lay there, just wanting to go somewhere, just wanting to leave his headache and confusion behind.
He didn't know how long it was, but Plum was moving cautiously now. He raised his head. They were approaching a fence. He noticed a gate off to the right, and pulled the rope so Plum went that way. They reached the gate and he got down to open it, and saw the sign. "Phineas Grotton Farm." He looked up at the sky, found the constellations, turned his head, and nodded. He'd started north, and Plum had continued north. He'd crossed land belonging both to himself and the Franklins. Now he was leaving the Franklin farm. North of the Franklins were the Bessers. Who was this Phineas Grotton? Had he bought out Lon Besser? But anything like that would've gotten around.
Was he forgetting again?
Well, no matter. Mr. Grotton would have to excuse his trespass. He opened the gate, led Plum through it, closed the gate. He mounted and rode forward, still north, toward the small Pangborn place and after the Pangborns the biggest farm in the county—old Wallace Elverton's place. The fields here, as everywhere in the county, lay fallow. Seemed as if the government had so much grain stored up they'd be able to get along without crops for years more.
He looked around. Somehow, the country bothered him. He wasn't sure why, but ... everything was wrong.
His head weighed an agonized ton. He put it down again. Plum went sedately forward. After a while she stopped. Harry looked up. Another fence. And what a fence! About ten feet of heavy steel mesh, topped by three feet of barbed-wire—five separate strands. What in the world had Sam Pangborn been thinking of to put up a monster like this?
He looked around. The gate should be further west. He rode that way. He found no gate. He turned back, heading east. No gate. Nothing but fence. And wasn't the fence gradually curving inward? He looked back. Yes, there was a slight inward curve.
He dismounted and tied Plum to the fence, then stepped back and figured the best way to get to the other side.
The best way, the only way, was to claw, clutch and clamber, as they used to say back when he was a kid.
It took some doing. He tore his shirt on the barbed wire, but he got over and began walking, straight ahead, due north. The earth changed beneath his feet. He stooped and touched it. Sand. Hard-packed sand. He'd never seen the like of it in this county.
He walked on. A sound came to him; a rising-falling whisper. He listened to it, and looked up every so often at the sky, to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
And the sand ended. His shoes plunked over flooring.
Flooring!
He knelt to make sure, and his hand felt wooden planks. He rose, and glanced up to see if he was still outdoors. Then he laughed. It was a sick laugh, so he stopped it.
He took another step. His shoes sounded against the wood. He walked. More wood. Wood that went on, as the sand had. And the roaring sound growing louder. And the air changing, smelling like air never had before in Cultwait County.
His entire body trembled. His mind trembled too. He walked, and came to a waist-high metal railing, and made a tiny sound deep in his throat. He looked out over water, endless water rolling in endless waves under the night sky. Crashing water, topped with reflected silver from the moon. Pounding water, filling the air with spray.
He put out his hands and grasped the railing. It was wet. He raised damp fingers to his mouth. Salt.
He stepped back, back, and turned and ran. He ran wildly, blindly, until he could run no more. Then he fell, feeling the sand beneath him, and shut his eyes and mind to everything.
Much later, he got up and went to the fence and climbed it. He came down on the other side and looked around and saw Plum. He walked to her, mounted her, sat still. The thoughts, or dreams, or whatever they were which had been torturing him these past few weeks began torturing him again.
It was getting light. His head was splitting.
Davie. His son Davie. Fourteen years old. Going to high school in town....
Town! He should've gone there in the first place! He would ride east, to the road, then head south, back toward home. That would bring him right down Main Street. Regulations or not, he'd talk to people, find out what was happening.
He kicked Plum's sides. The mare began to move. He kept kicking until she broke into a brisk canter. He held on with hands and legs.
Why hadn't he seen the Pangborns and Elvertons lately—a long time lately?
The ocean. He'd seen the ocean. Not a reservoir or lake made by flooding and by damming, but salt water and enormous. An ocean, where there could be no ocean. The Pangborns and Elvertons had been where that ocean was now. And after the Elvertons had come the Dobsons. And after them the new plastics plant. And after that the city of Crossville. And after that....
He was passing his own farm. He hadn't come through town, and yet here he was at his own farm. Could he have forgotten where town was? Could it be north of his home, not south? Could a man get so confused as to forget things he'd known all his life?
He reached the Shanks' place, and passed it at a trot. Then he was beyond their boundaries and breaking regulations again. He stayed on the road. He went by a small house and saw colored folks in the yard. There'd been no colored folks here. There'd been Eli Bergen and his family and his mother, in a bigger, newer house. The colored folks heard Plum's hooves and looked up and stared. Then a man raised his voice. "Mistah, you breakin' regulations! Mistah, the police gonnah get you!"
He rode on. He came to another house, neat and white, with three children playing on a grassy lawn. They saw him and ran inside. A moment later, adult voices yelled after him:
"You theah! Stop!"
"Call the sheriff! He's headin' foah Piney Woods!"
There was no place called Piney Woods in this county.
Was this how a man's mind went?
He came to another house, and another. He passed ten all told, and people shouted at him for breaking regulations, and the last three or four sounded like Easterners. And their houses looked like pictures of New England he'd seen in magazines.
He rode on. He never did come to town. He came to a ten-foot fence with a three-foot barbed-wire extension. He got off Plum and ripped his clothing climbing. He walked over hard-packed sand, and then wood, and came to a low metal railing. He looked out at the ocean, gleaming in bright sunlight, surging and seething endlessly. He felt the earth sway beneath him. He staggered, and dropped to his hands and knees, and shook his head like a fighter hit too many times. Then he got up and went back to the fence and heard a sound. It was a familiar sound, yet strange too. He shaded his eyes against the climbing sun. Then he saw it—a car. A car!
It was one of those tiny foreign jobs that run on practically no gas at all. It stopped beside him and two men got out. Young men with lined, tired faces; they wore policemen's uniforms. "You broke regulations, Mr. Burr. You'll have to come with us."
He nodded. He wanted to. He wanted to be taken care of. He turned toward Plum.
The other officer was walking around the horse. "Rode her hard," he said, and he sounded real worried. "Shouldn't have done that, Mr. Burr. We have so very few now...."
The officer holding Harry's arm said, "Pete."
The officer examining Plum said, "It won't make any difference in a while."
Harry looked at both of them, and felt sharp, personal fear.
"Take the horse back to his farm," the officer holding Harry said. He opened the door of the little car and pushed Harry inside. He went around to the driver's side and got behind the wheel and drove away. Harry looked back. Pete was leading Plum after them; not riding him, walking him. "He sure must like horses," he said.
"Yes."
"Am I going to jail?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"The doctor's place."
They stopped in front of the new house two miles past Dugan's farm. Except he'd never seen it before. Or had he? Everyone seemed to know about it—or was everyone only Edna and the Shanks?
He got out of the car. The officer took his arm and led him up the path. Harry noticed that the new house was big.
When they came inside, he knew it wasn't like any house he'd ever seen or heard of. There was this long central passageway, and dozens of doors branched off it on both sides, and stairways went down from it in at least three places that he could see, and at the far end—a good two hundred yards away—a big ramp led upward. And it was all gray plaster walls and dull black floors and cold white lighting, like a hospital, or a modern factory, or maybe a government building. Except that he didn't see or hear people.
He did hear something ; a low, rumbling noise. The further they came along the hall, the louder the rumbling grew. It seemed to be deep down somewhere.
They went through one of the doors on the right, into a windowless room. A thin little man with bald head and frameless glasses was there, putting on a white coat. His veiny hands shook. He looked a hundred years old. "Where's Petey?" he asked.
"Pete's all right, Dad. Just leading a horse back to Burr's farm."
The old man sighed. "I didn't know what form it would take. I expected one or two cases, but I couldn't predict whether it would be gradual or sudden, whether or not it would lead to violence."
"No violence, Dad."
"Fine, Stan." He looked at Harry. "I'm going to give you a little treatment, Mr. Burr. It'll settle your nerves and make everything...."
"What happened to Davie?" Harry asked, things pushing at his brain again.
Stan helped him up. "Just step this way, Mr. Burr."
He didn't resist. He went through the second door into the room with the big chair. He sat down and let them strap his arms and legs and let them lower the metal thing over his head. He felt needles pierce his scalp and the back of his neck. He let them do what they wanted; he would let them kill him if they wanted. All he asked was one answer so as to know whether or not he was insane.
"What happened to my son Davie?"
The old man walked across the room and examined what looked like the insides of a dozen big radios. He turned, his hand on a switch.
"Please," Harry whispered. "Just tell me about my son."
The doctor blinked behind his glasses, and then his hand left the switch. "Dead," he said, his voice a rustling of dried leaves. "Like so many millions of others. Dead, when the bombs fell. Dead, as everyone knew they would be and no one did anything to prevent. Dead. Perhaps the whole world is dead—except for us."
Harry stared at him.
"I can't take the time to explain it all. I have too much to do. Just three of us—myself and my two sons. My wife lost her mind. I should have helped her as I'm helping you."
"I don't understand," Harry said. "I remember people, and things, and where are they now? Dead? People can die, but farms, cities...."
"I haven't the time," the doctor repeated, voice rising. "I have to run a world. Three of us, to run a world! I built it as best I could, but how large could I make it? The money. The years and years of work. The people calling me insane when they found out ... but a few giving me more money, and the work going on. And those few caught like everyone else, unprepared when the holocaust started, unprepared and unable to reach my world. So they died. As I knew they would. As they should have known they would."
Harry felt the rumbling beneath him. Engines?
"You survived," the doctor said. "Your wife. A few hundred others in the rural areas. One other family in your area. I survived because I lived for survival, like a mole deep in the earth, expecting the catastrophe every minute. I survived because I gave up living to survive." He laughed, high and thin.
His son said, "Please, Dad...."
"No! I want to talk to someone sane ! You and Petey and I—we're all insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land, any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand? I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway. Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later. I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all, sanity ! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to check south and east; on all sides if that fence continued to curve inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife and his two sons....
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.
Harry turned around, smiling. "What?"
"A test, Mr. Burr. You passed it. Goodbye."
Harry went home. He told Edna he felt just great! She said she'd been worried when an officer found Plum wandering on the road; she thought maybe Harry had gone off somewhere and broken travel regulations.
"Me?" he exclaimed, amazed. "Break travel regulations? I'd as soon kill a pig!"
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