Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “I think I know what the trouble is,” Eye said. He crawled up on an Accumulator. “These Pushers have evolved a mechanical civilization. Consider for a minute how they went about it. They developed the use of their fingers, like Doctor, to shape metal. They utilized their seeing organs, like myself. And probably countless other organs.” He paused for effect.

  “These Pushers have become unspecialized!”

  They argued over it for several hours. The Walls maintained that no intelligent creature could be unspecialized. It was unknown in the Galaxy. But the evidence was before them—The Pusher cities, their vehicles . . . This Pusher, exemplifying the rest, seemed capable of a multitude of things.

  He was able to do everything except Push!

  Thinker supplied a partial explanation. “This is not a primitive planet. It is relatively old and should have been in the Cooperation thousands of years ago. Since it was not, the Pushers upon it were robbed of their birthright. Their ability, their specialty was to Push, but there was nothing to Push. Naturally, they have developed a deviant culture.

  “Exactly what this culture is, we can only guess. But on the basis of the evidence, there is reason to believe that these Pushers are—uncooperative.”

  Thinker had a habit of uttering the most shattering statement in the quietest possible way.

  “It is entirely possible,” Thinker went on inexorably, “that these Pushers will have nothing to do with us. In which case, our chances are approximately 283 to one against finding another Pusher planet.”

  “We can’t be sure he won’t cooperate,” Talker said, “until we get him into communication.” He found it almost impossible to believe that any intelligent creature would refuse to cooperate willingly.

  “But how?” Feeder asked. They decided upon a course of action. Doctor walked slowly up to the Pusher, who backed away from him. In the meantime, Talker extended a filament outside the Ship, around, and in again, behind the Pusher.

  The Pusher backed against a Wall—and Talker shoved the filament through the Pusher’s head, into the communication socket in the center of his brain.

  The Pusher collapsed.

  WHEN he came to, Feeder and Doctor had to hold the Pusher’s limbs, or he would have ripped out the communication line. Talker exercised his skill in learning the Pusher’s language.

  It wasn’t too hard. All Pusher languages were of the same family, and this was no exception. Talker was able to catch enough surface thoughts to form a pattern.

  He tried to communicate with the Pusher.

  The Pusher was silent.

  “I think he needs food,” Feeder said. They remembered that it had been almost two days since they had taken the Pusher on board. Feeder worked up some standard Pusher food and offered it.

  “My God! A steak!” the Pusher said.

  The Crew cheered along Talker’s communication circuits. The Pusher had said his first words!

  Talker examined the words and searched his memory. He knew about two hundred Pusher languages and many more simple variations. He found that this Pusher was speaking a cross between two Pusher tongues.

  After the Pusher had eaten, he looked around. Talker caught his thoughts and broadcast them to the Crew.

  THE Pusher had a queer way of looking at the Ship. He saw it as a riot of colors. The walls undulated. In front of him was something resembling a gigantic spider, colored black and green, with his web running all over the Ship and into the heads of all the creatures. He saw Eye as a strange, naked little animal, something between a skinned rabbit and an egg yolk—whatever those things were.

  Talker was fascinated by the new perspective the Pusher’s mind gave him. He had never seen things that way before. But now that the Pusher was pointing it out, Eye was a pretty funny looking creature.

  They settled down to communication.

  “What in hell are you things?” the Pusher asked, much calmer now than he had been during the two days. “Why did you grab me? Have I gone nuts?”

  “No,” Talker said, “you are not psychotic. We are a galactic trading ship. We were blown off our course by a storm, and our Pusher was killed.”

  “Well, what does that have to do with me?”

  “We would like you to join our crew,” Talker said, “to be our new Pusher.”

  The Pusher thought it over after the situation was explained to him. Talker could catch the feeling of conflict in the Pusher’s thoughts. He hadn’t decided whether to accept this as a real situation or not. Finally, the Pusher decided that he wasn’t crazy.

  “Look, boys,” he said, “I don’t know what you are or how this makes sense. I have to get out of here. I’m on a furlough, and if I don’t get back soon, the US Army’s going to be very interested.”

  Talker asked the Pusher to give him more information about “army,” and he fed it to Thinker.

  “These Pushers engage in personal combat,” was Thinker’s conclusion.

  “But why?” Talker asked. Sadly he admitted to himself that Thinker might have been right; the Pusher didn’t show many signs of willingness to cooperate.

  “I’d like to help you lads out,” Pusher said, “but I don’t know where you get the idea that I could push anything this size. You’d need a whole division of tanks just to budge it.”

  “Do you approve of these wars?” Talker asked, getting a suggestion from Thinker.

  “Nobody likes war—not those who have to do the dying at least.”

  “Then why do you fight them?”

  The Pusher made a gesture with his eating organ, which Eye picked up and sent to Thinker. “It’s kill or be killed. You guys know what war is, don’t you?”

  “We don’t have any wars,” Talker said.

  “You’re lucky,” the Pusher said bitterly. “We do. Plenty of them.”

  “Of course,” Talker said. He had the full explanation from Thinker now. “Would you like to end them?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “Then come with us. Be our Pusher.”

  The Pusher stood up and walked up to an Accumulator. He sat down on it and doubled the ends of his upper limbs.

  “How the hell can I stop all wars?” the Pusher demanded. “Even if I went to the big shots and told them—”

  “You won’t have to,” Talker said. “All you have to do is come with us. Push us to our base. Galactic will send a Contact Team to your planet. That will end your wars.”

  “The hell you say,” the Pusher replied. “You boys are stranded here, huh? Good enough. No monsters are going to take over Earth.”

  BEWILDEREDLY, Talker tried to understand the reasoning. Had he said something wrong? Was it possible that the Pusher didn’t understand him?

  “I thought you wanted to end wars,” Talker said.

  “Sure I do. But I don’t want anyone making us stop. I’m no traitor. I’d rather fight.”

  “No one will make you stop. You will just stop because there will be no further need for fighting.”

  “Do you know why we’re fighting?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Yeah? What’s your explanation?”

  “You Pushers have been separated from the main stream of the Galaxy,” Talker explained. “You have your specialty—Pushing—but nothing to Push. Accordingly, you have no real jobs. You play with things—metal, inanimate objects—but find no real satisfaction. Robbed of your true vocation, you fight from sheer frustration.

  “Once you find your place in the galactic Cooperation—and I assure you that it is an important place—your fighting will stop. Why should you fight, which is an unnatural occupation, when you can Push? Also, your mechanical civilization will end, since there will be no need for it.”

  The Pusher shook his head in what Talker guessed was a gesture of confusion. “What is this pushing?”

  Talker told him as best he could. Since the job was out of his scope, he had only a general idea of what a Pusher did.

  “You mean to say that that is what e
very Earthman should be doing?”

  “Of course,” Talker said. “It is your great specialty.”

  The Pusher thought about it for several minutes. “I think you want a physicist or a mentalist or something. I could never do anything like that. I’m a junior architect. And besides—well, it’s difficult to explain.”

  But Talker had already caught Pusher’s objection. He saw a Pusher female in his thoughts. No, two, three. And he caught a feeling of loneliness, strangeness. The Pusher was filled with doubts. He was afraid.

  “When we reach galactic,” Talker said, hoping it was the right thing, “you can meet other Pushers. Pusher females, too. All you Pushers look alike, so you should become friends with them. As far as loneliness in the Ship goes—it just doesn’t exist. You don’t understand the Cooperation yet. No one is lonely in the Cooperation.”

  THE Pusher was still considering the idea of there being other Pushers. Talker couldn’t understand why he was so startled at that. The Galaxy was filled with Pushers, Feeders, Talkers, and many other species, endlessly duplicated.

  “I can’t believe that anybody could end all war,” Pusher said. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  Talker felt as if he had been struck in the core. Thinker must have been right when he said these Pushers would be uncooperative. Was this going to be the end of Talker’s career? Were he and the rest of the Crew going to spend the rest of their lives in space, because of the stupidity of a bunch of Pushers?

  Even thinking this, Talker was able to feel sorry for the Pusher. It must be terrible, he thought. Doubting, uncertain, never trusting anyone. If these Pushers didn’t find their place in the Galaxy, they would exterminate themselves. Their place in the Cooperation was long overdue.

  “What can I do to convince you?” Talker asked.

  In despair, he opened all the circuits to the Pusher. He let the Pusher see Engine’s good-natured gruffness, the devil-may-care humor of the Walls; he showed him Eye’s poetic attempts, and Feeder’s cocky good nature. He opened his own mind and showed the Pusher a picture of his home planet, his family, the tree he was planning to buy when he got home.

  The pictures told the story of all of them, from different planets, representing different ethics, united by a common bond—the galactic Cooperation.

  The Pusher watched it all in silence.

  After a while, he shook his head. The thought accompanying the gesture was uncertain, weak—but negative.

  Talker told the Walls to open. They did, and the Pusher stared in amazement.

  “You may leave,” Talker said. “Just remove the communication line and go.”

  “What will you do?”

  “We will look for another Pusher planet.”

  “Where? Mars? Venus?”

  “We don’t know. All we can do is hope there is another in this region.”

  The Pusher looked at the opening, then back at the Crew. He hesitated and his face screwed up in a grimace of indecision.

  “All that you showed me was true?”

  No answer was necessary.

  “ALL right,” the Pusher said suddenly. “I’ll go. I’m a damned fool, but I’ll go. If this means what you say—it must mean what you say!”

  Talker saw that the agony of the Pusher’s decision had forced him out of contact with reality. He believed that he was in a dream, where decisions are easy and unimportant.

  “There’s just one little trouble,” Pusher said with the lightness of hysteria. “Boys, I’ll be damned if I know how to Push. You said something about faster-than-light? I can’t even run the mile in an hour.”

  “Of course you can Push,” Talker assured him, hoping he was right. He knew what a Pusher’s abilities were; but this one . . .

  “Just try it.”

  “Sure,” Pusher agreed. “I’ll probably wake up out of this, anyhow.”

  They sealed the ship for takeoff while Pusher talked to himself.

  “Funny,” Pusher said. “I thought a camping trip would be a nice way to spend a furlough, and all I do is get nightmares!”

  Engine boosted the Ship into the air. The Walls were sealed and Eye was guiding them away from the planet.

  “We’re in open space now,” Talker said. Listening to Pusher, he hoped his mind hadn’t cracked. “Eye and Thinker will give a direction, I’ll transmit it to you, and you Push along it.”

  “You’re crazy,” Pusher mumbled. “You must have the wrong planet. I wish you nightmares would go away.”

  “You’re in the Cooperation now,” Talker said desperately. “There’s the direction. Push!”

  The Pusher didn’t do anything for a moment. He was slowly emerging from his fantasy, realizing that he wasn’t in a dream, after all. He felt the Cooperation. Eye to Thinker, Thinker to Talker, Talker to Pusher, all inter-coordinated with Walls, and with each other.

  “What is this?” Pusher asked. He felt the oneness of the Ship, the great warmth, the closeness achieved only in the Cooperation.

  He Pushed.

  Nothing happened.

  “Try again,” Talker begged.

  PUSHER searched his mind. He found a deep well of doubt and fear. Staring into it, he saw his own tortured face.

  Thinker illuminated it for him.

  Pushers had lived with this doubt and fear for centuries. Pushers had fought through fear, killed through doubt.

  That was where the Pusher organ was!

  Human—specialist—Pusher—he entered fully into the Crew, merged with them, threw mental arms around the shoulders of Thinker and Talker.

  Suddenly, the Ship shot forward at eight times the speed of light. It continued to accelerate.

  OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS

  Wild talentsaren’t much use ordinarily—hut if just possibly, the talent could be made to work in the critical business of getting a just-barely-capable rocket off, the chance might pay off . . .

  Since this was such an important moment, Captain Powell walked into the Main Room with a light, inconsequential air. He thought fleetingly of whistling, but decided against it. Spacemen were adept at smelling out little inconsistencies.

  “Hi,” he said, dropping into a padded chair. Danton, the navigator, yawned elaborately and nodded. Arriglio, the power engineer, glanced at his watch.

  “We still blasting on schedule, Sam?”

  “Sure,” Powell said. “Two hours.” Both men nodded, as though flights to Mars were an everyday occurrence. Powell paused, then said in an offhand manner, “We’re adding another crew member.”

  “What for?” Danton asked at once, suspicion in every plane of his tanned face. Arriglio’s mouth tightened ominously.

  “Last minute order from Command Three,” Powell said casually. The two men didn’t move; but they seemed to come physically closer. Powell wondered what made spacemen so clannish.

  “What’s this job going to be?” Arriglio asked. He was small and dark, with close-fitting, curly black hair and sharp teeth. He looked like an unusually intelligent wire-haired terrier; one prepared to bark at a strange dog even before seeing him.

  “You boys know about the psi’s, don’t you?” Powell asked, with seeming inconsistency.

  “Sure,” Arriglio answered promptly. “Those crazy guys.”

  “No, they’re not crazy,” Danton said, his broad face thoughtful.

  “I suppose you know,” Powell said, “that a man named Waverley has been organizing the psi’s, trying to find jobs for them. He’s got telepaths, lightning calculators, all sorts of things.”

  “I read it in the papers,” Danton said. He raised a thick blond eyebrow. “That’s the extrasensory stuff, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Well, Waverley has been taking these psi’s out of the sideshows and placing them in regular work. He feels that there’s a place for their talents.”

  “So our extra crew member is a psi?” Danton said.

  “That’s right,” Powell said, observing the two men carefully. Spacemen were funny duc
ks. Many of them adjusted to their lonely, dangerous work by adopting an intense asociality. Spacemen were extreme conservatives, also, in the world’s newest work. Of course, that conservatism had survival value. If something old works, why try something new that may cost you your life?

  It all tended to make acceptance of the psi very difficult.

  “Who needs him?” Arriglio asked angrily. He had a notion that his authority in the engine room might be superseded. “We don’t need any mind reader aboard this ship.”

  “He’s not a mind reader,” Powell said. “The man we’re getting will fill a very important place.”

  “What’s he supposed to do?” Danton asked.

  Powell hesitated, then said, “He’s going to help us in our takeoff.”

  “How?” Danton asked.

  “He’s a telekinetic psi,” Powell said quickly. “He’s going to push.”

  Danton didn’t say anything. Arriglio stared for a moment, then burst into laughter.

  “Push! You mean he’s going to run along behind and shove?”

  “Maybe he’s going to carry Venture on his back!”

  “Sam, where did you leave your brains?”

  Powell grinned at the taunts, congratulating himself on his phrasing. It was better to have them laughing at him than fighting, with him.

  He stroked his mustache and said, “He’ll be here pretty soon.”

  “You’re serious?” Danton asked. “Absolutely.”

  “But Sam—”

  “Let me explain,” Powell said. “Telekinesis—which is what this man does—is an unexplained form of power. It involves moving masses—often large ones—with no evident physical interaction. And it does work.”

  The two men were listening intently, though skeptically. Powell glanced at his watch and went on.

  “Command figured that if this man could exert some of that force on our takeoff, we’d save an appreciable amount of fuel. That would give us a nice safety margin.”

  Both men nodded. They were all for saving fuel. It was the biggest single problem in spaceflight. Only so much could be packed; and then, a little error in calculation, a little added expenditure of the precious stuff—and that was it. Of the five ships that had gone out so far, two had been lost for that very reason.