Shakespeare's Planet

by Clifford D. Simak

  There was nothing there. Nothing had appeared. But something had seized and held and stripped him, and he tried to drive out his mind to see it, to learn what kind of thing it was. And as he tried to do this, it seemed his skull cracked open and his mind was freed, protruding and opening out so that it could encompass what no man had ever understood before. In a moment of blind panic, his mind seemed to expand to fill the universe, clutching with nimble mental fingers at everything within the confines of frozen space and flowing time and for an instant, but only an instant, he imagined that he saw deep into the core of the ultimate meaning hidden in the farthest reaches of the universe.

  Then his mind collapsed and his skull snapped back together, the thing let loose of him and, staggering, he reached out to grasp the railing of the ramp to hold himself erect.

  Nicodemus was beside him, supporting him, and his anxious voice asked, “What is the matter, Carter? What came over you?”

  Horton grasped the railing in a death grip, as if it were the one reality left to him. His body ached with tension, but his mind still retained some of its unnatural sharpness, although he could feel the sharpness fading. Helped by Nicodemus, he straightened. He shook his head and blinked his eyes, clearing his vision. The colors out on the sea of grass had changed. The purple haze had faded into a deep twilight. The brassiness of the grass had smoothed into a leaden hue, and the sky was black. As he watched, the first bright star came out.

  “What is the matter, Carter?” the robot asked again.

  “You mean you didn’t feel it?”

  “Something,” said Nicodemus. “Something frightening. It struck me and slid off. Not my body, but my mind. As if someone had used a mental fist and had missed the blow, merely brushing against my mind.”

  6

  The brain-that-once-had-been-a-monk was frightened, and the fright brought honesty. Confessional honesty, he thought, although never in the confessional had he ever been as honest as he was being now.

  What was that? asked the grande dame. What was that we felt?

  It was the hand of God, he told her, brushed against our brow.

  That’s ridiculous, said the scientist. I note it; that is all. A manifestation of some sort. From far out in space, perhaps. Not a product of this planet. I have the distinct impression that it was not of local origin. But until we have more data, we must make no attempt to characterize it.

  That’s the sheerest twaddle I have ever heard, said the grande dame. Our colleague, the priest, did better.

  Not a priest, said the monk. I have told you. A monk. A mere monk. A very piss-poor monk.

  And that was what he’d been, he told himself, continuing with his honest self-assessment. He never had been more. A less-than-nothing monk who had been afraid of death. Not the holy man that he had been acclaimed, but a sniveling, shivering coward who was afraid to die, and no man who was afraid of death ever could be holy. To the truly holy, death must be a promise of a new beginning and, thinking back, he knew he never had been able to conceive of it as anything but an end and nothingness.

  For the first time, thinking thus, he was able to admit what he never had been able to admit before, or honest enough to admit before—that he had seized the opportunity to become the servant of science to escape the fear of death. Although he knew he had purchased only a deferment of his death, for even as the Ship, he could not escape it altogether. Or at least could not be certain he’d escape it altogether, for there was the chance—the very slightest chance—which the scientist and the grande dame had discussed centuries ago, with himself staying strictly out of the discussion, afraid to enter it, that as the millennia went on, if they survived that long, the three of them possibly could become pure mind alone. And if that should prove to be the case, he thought, then they could become, in the strictest sense, immortal and eternal. But if this did not happen, they still must face the fact of death, for the spaceship could not last forever. In time it would become, for one reason or another, a shattered, worn-out hulk adrift between the stars, and in time no more than dust in the cosmic wind. But that would not be for a long time yet, he told himself, grasping at the hope. The Ship, with any luck, might survive millions of years, and that might give the three of them the time they needed to become pure mind alone—if, in fact, it was possible to become pure mind alone.

  Why this overriding fear of death, he asked himself. Why this cringing from it, not as an ordinary man would cringe, but as someone who was obsessed with a repugnance against the very thought of it? Was it, perhaps, because he’d lost his faith in God, or perhaps, which was even worse, had never achieved a faith in God? And if that were the case, why had he become a monk?

  Having got a start with honesty, he gave himself an honest answer. He had chosen monking as an occupation (not a calling, but an occupation) because he feared not only death, but even life itself, thinking that it might be easy work which would provide him shelter against the world he feared.

  In one thing, however, he had been mistaken. Monking had not proved an easy life, but by the time he’d found this out, he was afraid again—afraid of admitting his mistake, afraid of confessing, even to himself, the lie that he was living. So he had gone on as a monk and in the course of time, in one way and another (more than likely by pure happenstance) had achieved a reputation for a piety and devotion that was at once the envy and the pride of all his fellow monks, although some of them, on occasion, delivered some rather unworthy snide remarks. As time went on, it seemed that somehow a great many people came to hear of him—not perhaps for anything he had ever done (for, truth to tell, he had done but little), but for the things he seemed to stand for, for his way of life. As he thought about it now, he wondered whether there had not been a misconception—if his piety may not have stemmed from his devotion, as everyone seemed to think, but from his very fear and, because of his fear, his conscious attempts at self-effacement. A trembling mouse, he thought, that became a holy mouse because of its very trembling.

  But however that might have been, he finally came to stand as a symbol for the Age of Faith in a materialistic world and one writer who had interviewed him described him as a medieval man persisting into modern times. The profile that came from the interview, published in a magazine of wide circulation and written by a perceptive man who, for dramatic effect, did not hesitate to gild the lily slightly, had provided the impetus that, after several years, had elevated him to greatness as a simple man who held the necessary insight to return to basic faith and the strength of soul to hold that faith against the inroads of humanistic thought.

  He could have been an abbot, he thought with a surge of pride; perhaps more than an abbot. And when he became aware of the pride, made no more than a token effort to quash it. For pride, he thought, pride and, finally, honesty, were all that he had left. When the abbot had been called to God, it had been made known to him in various subtle ways, that he could succeed the abbot. But, suddenly afraid again, this time of responsibility and place, he had pleaded to remain with his simple cell and simple tasks, and because the order held him in high regard, he was granted his petition. Although, thinking of it since and now drenched in honesty, he allowed the suspicion that he had suppressed before out into the open. It was this: had his petition been granted not because of the order’s high regard of him, but because the order, knowing him too well, had realized what a poor stick of an abbot he would have made? In view of the favorable publicity his appointment would have afforded because of the wide acclaim which had been accorded him, had the order been forced into a position where it had felt bound to make at least the offer? And had there been a wholehearted sigh of relief throughout the entire house when he had declined?

  Fear, he thought—a man hounded all his life by fear—if not a fear of death, then the fear of life itself. Maybe, after all, there had been no need of fear. Perhaps, after all the fearfulness, there had been nothing actually to fear. It had been, more than likely, his own inadequacy and his lack of understand
ing that had driven him to fear.

  I am thinking like a man of flesh and bone, he told himself, not like a disembodied brain. The flesh still clings to me; the bones will not dissolve.

  The scientist was still talking. We must refrain especially, he was saying, from automatically thinking of the manifestation as something that had a mystical or a spiritual quality.

  It was just one of those simple things, said the grande dame, glad to get it settled.

  We must keep firmly in our consciousness, said the scientist, that there are no simple things in the universe. No happenings to be brushed casually to one side. There is a purpose in everything that happens. There always is a cause—you may be sure of that—and in time there will be effect as well.

  I wish, said the monk, I could be as positive as you are.

  I wish, said the grande dame, we hadn’t landed on this planet. It is an ishy place.

  7

  “You must restrain yourself,” Nicodemus said. “Not too much. The vichyssoise, one small slice of roast, half of the potato. You must realize that your gut has been inactive for hundreds of years. Frozen, certainly, and subject to no deterioration, but, even so, it must be given an opportunity to get into tone again. In a few days you can resume normal eating habits.”

  Horton eyed the food. “Where did you get this fare?” he demanded. “Certainly it was not carried from Earth.”

  “I forget,” said Nicodemus. “Of course you wouldn’t know. We have on board the most efficient model of a matter converter that had been manufactured up to the time of our departure.”

  “You mean you just shovel in some sand?”

  “Well, not exactly that. It isn’t quite that simple. But you have the right idea.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Horton. “There is something very wrong. I don’t remember any matter converters. They were talking about them, of course, and there seemed some hope that one could be put together, but to the best of my recollection …”

  “There are certain things, sir,” said Nicodemus, rather hurriedly, “with which you are not acquainted. One of them is that once you went into cold-sleep, we did not leave immediately.”

  “You mean there was some delay?”

  “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, quite a bit of delay.”

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t try to be mysterious about it. How long?”

  “Well, fifty years or so.”

  “Fifty years! Why fifty years? Why put us into cold-sleep and then wait fifty years?”

  “There was no real urgency,” said Nicodemus. “The time span of the project was estimated to run over so long a time, a couple of hundred years or perhaps slightly more before a ship returned with news of habitable planets, that a delay of fifty years did not seem excessive if in that length of time it was possible to develop certain systems that would give a better chance of success.”

  “Like a matter converter, for example.”

  “Yes, that was one of the things. Not absolutely necessary, of course, but convenient and adding a certain margin. There were, more importantly, certain ship engineering features which, if they could be worked out …”

  “And they were worked out?”

  “Most of them,” said Nicodemus.

  “They never told us there would be such delay,” said Horton. “Neither us nor any of the other crews that were in training at the time. If any of the other crews had known, they’d gotten the word to us.”

  “There was,” said Nicodemus, “no need for you to know. There might have been some illogical objection on your part if you had been told. And it was important that the human crews be ready when the ships were set to go. You see, all of you were very special people. Perhaps you remember with what great care you were chosen.”

  “God, yes. We were run through computers for calculations of survival factors. Our psychological profiles were measured time and time again. They damn near wore us out with physical testing. And they implanted that telepathic dingus in our brains so we could talk with Ship, and that was the most bothersome of all. I seem to recall it took months to learn how to use it properly. But why do all this, then rush us to cold storage? We could simply have stood by.”

  “That could have been one approach,” said Nicodemus, “with you growing older by the year. Not exactly youth, but not too great an age, was one of the factors that went into the selection of the crews. There’d be little sense in sending oldsters out. Placed in cold-sleep, you did not age. Time was not a factor to you, for in cold-sleep time is not a factor. Doing it the way it was done, the crews were standing by, their facilities and abilities undimmed by the time it took to get other bugs ironed out. The ships could have gone when you were frozen, but by waiting fifty years, the ships’ chances and your chances were considerably enhanced. The life-support systems for the brains were perfected to a point that would have been thought impossible fifty years before, the linkage between brains and ship were made more efficient and sensitive and almost foolproof. The cold-sleep systems were improved.”

  “I have divided feelings about it,” said Horton. “However, I guess it personally makes no difference to me. If you can’t live out your life in your own time, I suppose it becomes immaterial when you do live it out. What I do regret is that I am left alone. Helen and I had something going for us, and I liked the other two. I suppose, as well, there is some guilt because they died and I lived on. You say you saved my life because I was in cubicle number one. If I’d not been in it, one of the others would have lived and I would now be dead.”

  “You must feel no guilt,” Nicodemus told him. “If there is anyone who should feel the guilt, I am the one, but I feel no guilt, for reason tells me I was capable and performed to the limit of current technology. But you—you had no part in it. You did nothing; you shared in no decision.”

  “Yes, I know. But, even so, I can’t avoid thinking …”

  “Eat your soup,” said Nicodemus. “The roast is growing cold.”

  Horton had a spoonful of the soup. “It is good,” he said.

  “Of course it is. I told you I can be an accomplished chef.”

  “Can be,” said Horton. “That’s a strange way of putting it. You either are a chef, or you aren’t. But you say you can be one. That was what you said about being an engineer. Not that you were one, but that you could be one. It seems to me, my friend, you can be too many things. A moment ago you implied that you were, as well, a good cold-sleep technician.”

  “But the way I say it is precisely right,” protested Nicodemus. “That is the way it is. I am a chef right now and can be an engineer or a mathematician or astronomer or geologist …”

  “There’s no need for you to be a geologist. I’m the geologist of this expedition. Helen was the biologist and chemist.”

  “Some day,” said Nicodemus, “there might be need of two geologists.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Horton. “No man or no robot could be as many things as you say you are or could be. It would take years of study, and in the process of learning each new specialty or discipline, you’d lose some of the previous training you had taken. Furthermore, you’re simply a service robot, not specialized at all. Let’s face it, your brain capacity is small, and your reaction system is comparatively insensitive. Ship said that you were chosen deliberately because of your simplicity—because there was very little that could go wrong with you.”

  “Which is all true enough,” Nicodemus admitted. “I am what you say I am. A runner-of-errands and a fetcher-of-objects and good for little else. My brain capacity is small. But when you have two brains or three …”

  Horton threw down his spoon on the table. “You are mad!” he said. “No one has two brains.”

  “I have,” said Nicodemus calmly. “I have two brains right now—the old standard, stupid robot brain and a chef-brain and if I wanted, I could add another brain, although I do not know what kind of brain would supplement a chef-brain. A nutritionist-brain, perhaps, although the kit d
oesn’t have that kind of brain.”

  With an effort, Horton controlled himself. “Now let’s start over,” he said. “Let’s take it from the top and go slow and easy so that this stupid human brain of mine can follow what you’re saying.”

  “It was those fifty years,” said Nicodemus.

  “What fifty years, goddammit?”

  “Those fifty years they took after you were frozen. A lot of good research and development can be done in fifty years if a lot of humans put their minds to it. You trained, did you not, with a most accomplished robot—the finest piece of humanoid machinery that had ever been built.”

  “Yes, we did,” said Horton. “I can remember him as if it were only yesterday …

  “To you,” said Nicodemus, “it would be only yesterday. The thousand years since then are as nothing to you.”

  “He was a little stinker,” Horton said. “He was a martinet. He knew three times more than we did and was ten times as capable. He rubbed it into us in his suave, sleek, nasty way. So slick about it you could never peg him. All of us hated the little sonofabitch.”

  “There, you see,” said Nicodemus triumphantly. “That could not continue. It was a situation that could not be tolerated. If he’d been sent with you, think of all the friction, the clash of personalities. That is why you have me. They couldn’t use a thing like him. They had to use a simple, humble clod like me, the kind of robot you were accustomed to ordering around and who would not resent the ordering around. But a simple, humble clod like me would be incapable on his own to rise to the occasions that necessity sometimes might demand. So they hit upon the idea of auxiliary brains that could be plugged into place to supplement a cloddish brain like mine.”

  “You mean you have a box full of auxiliary brains that you just plug in!”

  “Not really brains,” said Nicodemus. “They are called transmogs, although I’m not sure why. Someone once told me the term was short for transmogrification. Is there such a word?”