Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  I stepped out the backdoor to have a look. Everything seemed in order to me. The Milky Way was still up there, smeared across the sky as thick as ever. The Big Dipper was shining away, and the North Star was still pointing toward Westchester. No difference. The ground was frozen under my feet, but the air was almost warm. Spring would be coming along soon, and Spring fashions.

  In the distance I could see the red glow of Manhattan, across the 59th Street Bridge. That seemed to settle it. The only problem I had was dresses, and I went back inside to worry about them.

  In a few more days the star-story had reached the front page. STARS DISAPPEARING, the headlines read. WHAT NEXT?

  It seemed that millions of stars were vanishing from the Milky Way every day and night. The other galaxies seemed to be unaffected, although it was hard to tell; but they were definitely dropping out of ours. Most of them were so far away they could only be caught with a high-powered telescope, or a camera; but hundreds could still be seen disappearing by anybody with a pair of eyes. Not blowing up or fading out; just dick—and they were gone.

  This article—written by an astronomer and a Phd.—reminded everybody that only the light was stopping. The stars themselves must have been snubbed out hundreds of millions of years ago, and that the light was finally stopping, after travelling all that distance across space. I think it was hundreds of millions, although it might have been thousands.

  The article didn’t even speculate on the cause of it all.

  I went star-gazing that night. Everyone else in the neighborhood was out in their backyards, too. And sure enough, in the gigantic spread of stars I could see little specks of light winking out. They were barely noticeable; if I hadn’t been looking for them I would never have seen anything different.

  “Hey Jane,” I called in the back door. “Come on out and have a look.”

  My wife came out and stood, hands on hips, looking at the sky. She was frowning, as though she resented the whole business.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Look carefully,” I said. “Watch one section at a time. There was one! Did you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Watch for little winks,” I said. But it wasn’t until the Thomas kid came from next door and loaned her his telescope that she saw it.

  “Here, Mrs. Ostersen, use this,” the kid said. He had three or four-telescopes in his hands, a pair of binoculars, and a handful of charts. Quite a kid.

  “You too, Mr. Ostersen,” he said.

  Through the telescope I could really see it. One moment a pinpoint of light would be there, and then—bing! It was gone. It was downright weird. For the first time I started getting worried.

  It didn’t bother Jane, though. She went back into her kitchen.

  OF course, even with the galaxy collapsing, the dress business had to go on, but I found myself buying a newspaper four or five times a day and keeping the radio on in the store to find out what was going on. Everybody else was doing the same. People were even arguing about it on street corners.

  The newspapers had about a thousand different theories. There were scientific articles on the red shift, and intergalactic dust; there were articles on stellar evolution and visual hallucination.; the psychologists were trying to prove that the stars hadn’t been there in the first place, or something like that.

  I didn’t know what to believe. The only article that made any sense to me was one written by a social, commentator, and he wasn’t even a full-fledged scientist. He said it looked as if someone was doing a big job of housecleaning in our galaxy.

  The Thomas kid had his own theories. He was sure it was the work of invaders from another dimension. He told me they were sucking our galaxy into theirs, which was in another dimension, like dust into a vacuum cleaner.

  “It’s perfectly clear, Mr. Ostersen,” he told me one evening after work. “They’ve started sucking in the outside stars at the other side of the Milky Way, and they’re working through the centre. They’ll reach us last, because we’re at the far end.”

  “Well . . .” I said.

  “After all,” he told me, “Astonishing Yarns and Weird Science Stories practically agree on it, and they’re the leaders in the sci-fic field.”

  “But they’re not scientists,” I said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” the kid told me. “They predicted the submarine before there was one. They predicted airplanes when scientists were saying the bumblebee couldn’t fly. And rockets and radar and atom bombs. They’ve got the truth about this too.”

  He paused for breath. “Someone’s gotta stop the invaders,” he went on in a tone of utter conviction. He looked at me sharply. “You know, since they’re dimension-changers, they can take the appearance of humans.” Again he looked at me, suspiciously.

  “Anyone might be one. You might be one.”

  I could see he was getting nervous, and maybe on the verge of handing me over to some committee or other, so I fed him milk and cake. That just made him more suspicious, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  The newspapers took up the science-fiction theory just as the Thomas kid had told it to me, and added their own embellishments. Some guy said he knew how the invaders could be stopped. He had been approached by them, he said, and they’d offered him controllership of a small galaxy if he’d cooperate. Of course, he wouldn’t.

  It sounds foolish, but the sky was getting pretty bare. People in every country were saying foolish things and doing foolish things. We were starting to wonder how soon our own sun would go.

  I watched every night, and the stars disappeared faster and faster. The thing seemed to increase at a geometric rate. Soon the sky was just filled with little lights going out, faster than you could count. Almost all of it could be seen with the naked eye now, because it was getting a lot closer to us.

  In two weeks the only part of the Milky Way left were the Magallenic clouds, and the astronomers said that they weren’t a part of our galaxy anyhow. Betelguese and Ac tares and Rigel winked out, and Sirius and Vega. Then Alpha Centauri disappeared, and that was our closest neighbor. Aside from the moon, the sky was pretty bare at night, just a few dots and patches here and there.

  I don’t know what would have happened if the voice hadn’t been heard then. It would be anybody’s guess. But the voice came the day after Alpha Centauri vanished.

  I first heard it on my way to the store. I was walking down Lexington Avenue from the 59th Street station, looking in the dress windows to see what my competitors had to offer. Just as I was passing Mary-Belled Frocks, and wondering how soon they’d have their Summer line in, I heard it.

  It was a pleasant voice, friendly. It seemed to come from just behind me, about three feet over my shoulder.

  “Judgment of the inhabitants of the planet Earth,” it said, “will be held in five days. Please prepare yourselves for final examination and departure. This announcement will be repeated.”

  I looked around at once to find out who was speaking. I half-expected to find a tall, cadaverous fanatic at my shoulder, some fiery-eyed fellow with flowing hair and a beard. But there was no one at all. The nearest person was about fifteen feet from me. For a moment I thought I was having a hallucination, hearing voices, that sort of thing. Then I saw that everyone else must have heard it, too.

  Lexington Avenue is a pretty busy place at nine o’clock in the morning. There are plenty of people hurrying back and forth, kids going to school, subways roaring beneath you, cars and buses honking. Not now. You couldn’t hear a sound. Every car had stopped, right where it was. The people on the sidewalks seemed frozen practically in mid-stride.

  The man nearest me walked up. He was well-dressed, about my age—in his early forties. He was eyeing me with suspicion, as though I might have been responsible for the whole thing. I suppose I was looking at him in the same way.

  “Did you hear it?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you do it?”r />
  “No. Did you?”

  “Most certainly not,” he said indignantly. We stood for a few seconds, just looking at each other. I think we—everybody—knew, right there and then, that it was no hoax. What with the stars disappearing, I mean.

  A pretty girl in a fur coat walked up to me. She was young; she looked scared, and very defiant.

  “Did you hear it?” she asked us.

  “Yes,” I said, and the man nodded.

  “Is it possible that she was operating on a loudspeaker?” the girl asked.

  She?” we both said.

  “That woman’s voice,” the girl said, looking a little exasperated. “A young woman—she said, ‘Judgment of the inhabitants—’ ”

  “It was a man’s voice,” the man said. “Of that I’m certain.” He looked at me, and I nodded.

  “Oh no,” the girl told us. “A girl—she even had a slight New England accent—it was unmistakable.” She looked around for support.

  The people on Lexington Avenue had gathered in small groups. There were knots of people up and down the sidewalks as far as I could see. The cars still weren’t moving. Most of the drivers had gotten out to ask someone else about the voice.

  “Say, pardon me,” some man said to me. “Am I hearing things or did you hear—”

  That’s how it was for the next hour. Everyone, it seemed, had heard it. But every woman was sure it had been a woman’s voice, and every man was sure it had been a man’s. I left finally, and went to my store.

  Minnie, the salesgirl, and Frank, my stock boy, were already there. They had the radio on, but they were talking over it.

  “Say, Mr. Ostersen,” Frank called as I walked in. “Did you hear it?”

  I sat down and discussed it with them, but we couldn’t tell each other much. Frank had been in the store when he heard it. Minnie had just been walking in, her hand on the doorknob. Minnie was sure it was a girl’s voice, about her own age, with just the trace of a Bronx accent. Frank and I held out for a man’s voice, but where I was sure the man was in his early forties or late thirties, Frank was positive it was a young man, about twenty or twenty-two.

  We noticed the radio, finally. It had been broadcasting all that time, but we hadn’t paid any attention.

  “. . . voice was heard in all parts of the country, at nine-oh-three this morning, Eastern Standard Time. This voice, purporting to be that of—of the, ah, Deity, announcing the Judgment Day, was heard—ah, was heard in all parts of the country.” The voice hesitated, then continued. “In place of our usual program, we now bring you the Reverend Joseph Morrison, who will speak on—” The voice stopped for a moment, then came back with renewed vigor. “The Reverend Joseph Morrison!”

  We listened to the radio most of the morning. The Reverend Joseph Morrison seemed as confused as the rest of us, but he was followed by news announcements. The voice had been heard, as far as they could make out, in every country on earth. It had spoken in every language, every dialect and sub-dialect.

  Minnie looked dazed as the reports piled up, and Frank looked shocked. I suppose I looked as startled as my normal dead-pan would show. At eleven-forty-five I decided to call my wife. No use. I couldn’t even get the operator.

  “. . . possibilities that this is a hoax,” a voice was saying from the radio in an unconvincing tone. “Mass hallucinations are far from unknown, and the chance must be considered. In the Middle Ages . . .”

  Cutting through our conversation, and through the blaring radio, smooth as a knife through butter, the voice came again.

  “Judgment of the inhabitants of the planet Earth will be held in five days. Please prepare yourselves for final examination and departure. This announcement will be repeated.”

  Departure! I thought. Where were we going?

  “There!” Frank shouted. “You see—it was a young man!”

  “You’re crazy!” Minnie screamed at him. Her hair had fallen over her eyes; she looked like an impassioned cocker spaniel.

  “You’re crazy!” Frank shouted back. They stood glaring at each other. Minnie seemed about ready to throw the cash register at him.

  “Easy now,” I said. “It seems—it seems like the voice speaks in everybody’s language, and sounds like the sort of voice everybody would know.”

  “But how’s that possible?” Frank asked me.

  “I don’t know. But it’s certainly logical. If the voice spoke just in Latin or Hebrew or English, none of the Arabs would understand. Or the Armenians. So, while it’s speaking everybody’s language, it might as well speak everybody’s dialect at the same time.”

  “Should we call it it?” Frank asked in a whisper. He glanced over his shoulder, as though he expected to find an avenging angel there. “Shouldn’t we refer to it as Him?”

  “She, you mean,” Minnie said. “The old masculine idea that God must be a man is just so much ego-wash. Why, the feminine principle is evident all through the universe. Why, why, you just can’t say Him when-when—”

  Minnie had never been too strong on ideas. She ran out of breath and stood, panting and pushing back her hair.

  After a while we talked about it calmly, and listened to the radio. There were more speakers and another survey of the countries that had heard the second announcement. At two o’clock I told them to go home. It was no use trying to get any work done that day. Besides, there were no customers.

  The subways were running again when I reached the BMT, and I rode to my home in Queens.

  “Of course you heard it?” My wife asked me at the door.

  “Of course,” I said. “Was it spoken by a woman in her middle-thirties, with just the trace of a Queens accent?”

  “Yes!” Jane said, “Thank God we can agree on something!” But of course we couldn’t.

  We talked about it all through supper, and we talked about it after supper. At nine o’clock the announcement came again, from behind and above our shoulders.

  “Judgment of the inhabitants of the planet Earth will be held in five days. Please prepare yourselves for final examination and departure. That is all.”

  “Well,” Jane said. “I guess She means it.”

  “I guess He does,” I said. So we went to bed.

  THE next day I went in to work, although I don’t know why. I knew that this was It, and everyone else knew it too. But it seemed right to go back to work, end of the world or not. Most of my adult life had been bound up in that store, and I wanted a day more with it. I had some idea of getting my affairs in order, although I knew it couldn’t matter.

  The subway ride was murderous. New York is always a crowded city, but it seemed as though the whole United States had moved in. The subways were so tightly jammed the doors couldn’t even close. When I finally got out, the streets were filled from one curb to the other. Traffic had given up, and people were piling out of cars and buses anywhere they were stopped, adding to the jam in the streets.

  In the store, Frank and Minnie were already there. I guess they had the same idea—about gathering up loose ends.

  “Gee, Mr. Ostersen,” Frank said. “What do you think He’ll do—about our sins, I mean?” Frank was twenty-one, and I couldn’t see how he could have committed an unusual number of sins. But he was worried about them. The way he frowned and paced around, he might have been the devil himself.

  Minnie didn’t have any sins on her mind, as far as I could see. She was wearing what must have been her best dress—she hadn’t bought it in my store—and her hair was a lighter brown than it had been yesterday. I suspected she wanted to look her best in front of the Almighty, be He man or woman.

  We talked about sins most of the morning, and listened to the radio. The radio had a lot to say about sins, but no two speakers agreed.

  Around lunchtime, Ollie Bernstein dropped in.

  “Hiya, ex-competitor,” he said, standing in the doorway. “How’s business?”

  “I sold five dozen halos,” I told him. “How’s with you?”

  �
�What’s it matter?” he asked, coming sideways through the doorway. “Four days before Judgment, who cares? Come have lunch with me, ex-competitor.”

  Ollie and I had never been on really friendly terms. We sold the same price line, and our stores were too close for mutual comfort. Also, he was fat and I’ve always been suspicious of fat men. But suddenly, I found myself liking him. It seemed a shame I hadn’t recognized his solid qualities years ago.

  We went to Lotto’s, a classy place on East 73rd Street. We had hoped to avoid some of the crowd by going uptown, but there wasn’t a chance of it. Lotto’s was packed, and we stood three-quarters of an hour for a table.

  Seated, we ordered roast duck, but had to settle for hamburger steak. The waiter told us people had been walking in and ordering roast duck all morning.

  Lotto’s had a radio—probably for the first time in its existence—and a minister or rabbi was speaking. He was interrupted by a news announcement.

  “The war in Indo-China is over,” the announcer said. “Peace was declared at 7:30 this morning. Also, a general truce has been called in Mongolia, and in Tanganyika.” There was a lot of that. In Indo-China, it seemed that the rebels had given up the country to the French, declaring that all men should live in peace. The French immediately announced they were withdrawing their forces as fast as they could get planes for them. Every Frenchman was going to spend the last three days before Judgment in Paris.

  For a moment I wished I was in Paris.

  The announcer also said, the Russian airforce had agreed to pilot the Frenchmen home.

  It was the same everywhere. Every country was leaning over backward, giving up this and that, offering land to its neighbors, shipping food to less fortunate areas, and so forth.

  We listened over a bottle of Moselle—all the champagne had been drunk that morning. I think I got a little high. Anyhow, I walked back with my arms around two total strangers. We were assuring each other that peace, it was wonderful.

  And it was at that.

  I went home early, to miss the evening rush. It was still rough going. I grinned at my wife as I reached the door, and she grinned back. Jane was a little high, also.