Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  He knew that Egrish and her fellows lived their lives in darkness. That implied that they came from a lightless world.

  What world?

  And normally they didn’t wear anything. Why did they need dresses now?

  What were they? Why were they coming here? And what did Beilis mean about getting them to work?

  Slobold decided that genteel starvation was better than employment of this sort.

  “Egrish was quite pleased,” Mr. Beilis said, a week later. He finished checking the measurements. “The others will be too, I’m sure.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Slobold said.

  “They’re really mare adaptable than I dared hope,” Mr. Beilis said, “They’re getting acclimated already. And, of course, your work will help.”

  “I’m very glad,” Slobold said, smiling mechanically and wishing Beilis would leave.

  But Beilis was feeling conversational. He leaned on the counter and said, “After all, there’s no reason why they should function only in the darkness. It’s very confining. That’s why I brought them up from Darkside.”

  Slobold nodded.

  “I think that’s all,” Beilis said, tucking the dress box under his arm. He started toward the door. “By the way,” he said. “You should have told me that you were the wrong Slobold.”

  Slobold could only grin foolishly.

  “But there’ll be no damage done,” Beilis said. “Since Egrish wants to thank you in person.”

  He closed the door gently behind him.

  Slobold stood for a long time, staring at the door. Then he touched the $100 bills in his pocket.

  “This is ridiculous,” he told himself. Quickly he locked the front door. Then he hurried to the back door, and bolted it. Then he lighted a cigar.

  “Perfectly ridiculous,” he said. Outside it was broad daylight. He smiled at his fears, and snapped on the overhead lights.

  He heard a soft noise behind him.

  The cigar slid from his fingers, but Slobold didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound, although every nerve in his body was shrieking.

  “Hello, Mr. Slobold,” a voice said.

  Slobold still was unable to move, there in his brightly lighted shop.

  “We want to thank you for your very fine work,” the voice said. “All of us.”

  Slobold knew that he would go crazy at once, if he didrit look. There could be nothing worse than not looking. Slowly, inexorably, he began to turn.

  “Klish said we could come,” the voice said. “Klish said you would be the first to see us. In the daytime, I mean.”

  Slobold completed his turn and looked. There was Egrish, and there were the others. They weren’t wearing the dresses.

  They weren’t wearing the dresses. How could they, when they had no bodies? Four gigantic heads floated in front of him. Heads? Yes, he supposed that the misshapen, bulging things were heads.

  There was something vaguely familiar about them.

  For a moment, Slobold tried desperately to convince himself that he was having an hallucination. He couldn’t have met them before, he told himself. Beilis said they came from Darkside. They lived and worked in the dark. They had never owned clothes, never would again . . .

  Then Slobold remembered. He had met them once before, in a particularly bad dream.

  They were nightmares.

  Perfectly understandable, he thought crazily. Long overdue, really, when one comes to think about it. No reason why nightmares should restrict themselves to the night. Daytime—huge, undeveloped area, ripe for exploitation.

  Mr. Beilis had started a daymare branch, and here they were.

  But why dresses? Slobold knew, then, what he had been making, and it was just too much. His mind began to shiver and tremble, and warp around the edges. He wished he could go decently insane.

  “We’ll go now,” Egrish said. “The light still bothers us.”

  Slobold saw the fantastic heads drift closer.

  “Thank you for the sleeping masks. They fit perfectly.”

  Slobold collapsed to the floor.

  “You’ll be seeing us,” Egrish said.

  CONQUEROR’S PLANET

  They were singularly revolting folk—primitives with a twisted outlook on life. How could they logically defeat a man like Ewick?

  The newer trends in science fiction often point up brilliantly those fascinating aspects of primitive human behavior which make a travesty of all logic. “I’m happiest when I starve,” said the witch doctor of this story. Sheckley has a mordant gift for portraying the stark lunacy of primitives on other worlds, turning that lunacy into high comedy, and then jolting and sobering you with a surprise twist as startling as a thunderclap in January.

  THE SHIP BLASTED off as soon as Ewick had unloaded his luggage. Ewick stood watching it until it disappeared in the sky, feeling a little sorry about leaving it. The spacemen were a grand bunch, and the atmosphere of the cruise had been chummy and informal. Like a club, he thought . . .

  He lifted his bags off the spongy ground, and started for Colonial House, his cat, Fluff, following close at his heels. He had smuggled her on board with the crew’s help. The Colonial Bureau didn’t approve of pets on primitive worlds, but he had to have some sort of physical link with Earth. There would be no other companionship on this little mudball of a planet.

  He had anticipated a welcoming committee, and was not surprised when the natives came forward to meet him. They were bunched together as closely as they could get, snarling at the ones nearest them. Obviously they detested each other, and just as obviously needed the security of the pack.

  “Greetings, Master,” one of them said, in a tone so supercharged with hate that Ewick looked at him closely. Under that searching scrutiny, the native faded quickly back into the pack. But it didn’t matter. They all looked alike. A stunted, grayskinned, bearded little people, wide of mouth, and narrow of eye.

  Handsome fellows, Ewick thought ironically, rubbing his smooth chin.

  “Here, take my bags,” he said, dropping his luggage. It was no sale. The natives remained welded together in a mob. He had to single out specific ones before he got any action.

  Trudging along with Fluff at his side, Ewick permitted himself a wan smile. The Colonial Bureau had really picked a spot for him, on the planet Selge! Overhead the sky was dark with thunder-heads, the air thick and moist. On Earth it would be raining within five minutes, with such a sky. Here, the rain wouldn’t fall for months. But the clouds would hang there forever, threatening.

  Well, it could be worse, he reminded himself. He might have been given a fever world, or some other danger spot. There were places in the Colonial Administration where a man was fortunate if he lived out his tour of duty.

  Here, he would face no greater danger than tripping over his own feet. And after a year, he would be able to move on to a better berth. A city job, perhaps, where he could bring Janet.

  “Just drop them there,” he said when they reached Colonial House.

  The Selgens did so with alacrity, and moved back into the crowd. Ewick opened the door for Fluff, who seemed content to curl on the front steps, and went inside.

  Colonial House, administrative headquarters for the planet Selge, was a seven room bungalow. It had sleeping quarters for three men, the normal complement on Selge before Colonial Bureau had cut it to one.

  Ewick picked the largest bedroom, and began to unpack. He hung his clothes in the closet, humming to himself. The glossy picture of Janet, his wife, went on the stand by the bed. Another smaller picture he put on the bureau. It showed a pretty, darkhaired girl clinging to the arm of a smiling young man. The young man was in a tight, starched Colonial Bureau uniform. Thus Ewick had courted romance once on an elm-shaded campus five years ago, on his graduation from the Academy.

  Only five years, he thought, and already he was administering an entire planet by himself. True, it wasn’t much of a planet. A liability to Earth, rather than an asset. But it was all his. It
showed that his superiors had confidence in him.

  “You are no more than a louse,” a voice said outside his window.

  “And you are a miserable worm,” another voice answered.

  Looking out, Ewick saw two Selgens talking. That was how they conversed on this planet. In his indoctrination lecture he had been told that the Selgens were the meanest, stupidest people in the inhabited universe. They would be dangerous, if they weren’t such incredible cowards.

  “I would like to see you starving, your tongue hanging out,” the first voice said. “I would spit, and walk by.”

  “Ah, to find you ground up into little bits,” the second replied.

  And that, Ewick knew, was what passed for a pleasant exchange of friendly greetings.

  He’d really have to do a paper on these people. Something with a title like, The Insult As A Form Of Polite Address Among The Selgens.

  He unpacked his books, stacking them methodically on the bureau. He had brought quite a few, because this Selgen year would afford him a wonderful opportunity to catch up on his studies. Chemistry was his weak point, and he was determined to master it. It would help his advancement.

  “I detest everyone,” the first voice said. “But I detest you the most.”

  Ewick unpacked his carbine and assembled it, leaning the weapon against the wall. He decided that he had been foolish to bring it. Selge had no game worth speaking of, and the natives were a cowardly, disorganized lot. He’d have to oil and sand the barrel constantly or it would rust in this humid place.

  “Oh, if only I had words to tell you how much I hate you,” the second voice said. “I hate you even more than an Outsider.”

  Ewick grinned at their stupidity. The Selgen’s were really unique in the universe. When a Colonial expedition had first landed on the planet, the natives had been starving, because they hated each other too much to cooperate in farming. Earth had given them administrators to keep them at work. Without Earth’s intervention, the Selgens would have died out.

  But the damned fools hated Earthmen even more than they detested each other.

  Pleasant little people, Ewick thought.

  “Get to work,” he called out the window.

  The natives drifted off, with an ironic chorus of “Yes, Master.” He’d have to tell them to stop that. His title was Administrator.

  Ewick came to the door, ready to start his first day’s administering. Fluff, his cat, had found a small, scraggly native animal, but was walking serenely past, ignoring it.

  “Good for you, kitty,” Ewick said. He walked down to the fields . . .

  The next two weeks were filled with frustration. The Selgens seemed to have forgotten everything the previous administrators had taught them. Ewick had to start from scratch, explaining the theory of farming and its importance to them.

  The Selgens grinned and cursed, and did their best to ignore him. Finally, he got them to work in the fields, and things began to straighten out. The Selgens were unwillingly producing the food that kept them alive, and Ewick watched them, making sure they didn’t cheat themselves.

  He had decided that a good sociological paper on the Selgens would show his superiors that he was alert, and definitely aid his career. One day he took paper and pen with him to the fields.

  “Tell me,” he said to a bearded old Selgen, laboriously hoeing a corner of the field, “why do you all speak English?” It was a point that his lectures hadn’t made clear.

  The native glared at him. “Master,” he said, “before the Earthmen came we spoke many, many different languages. Every family had their own language. I had my own language, which no one else in the world could speak, not even my wife.” He looked at Ewick proudly.

  “Then how did you talk?” Ewick asked. “Did you learn someone else’s language?”

  “I didn’t speak to anyone,” the Selgen said proudly. “I would never learn the tongue of an inferior. And they wouldn’t either.” He gestured contemptuously toward the rest of the workers. “It was less of an insult to learn the Earthman’s tongue, since you Earthmen are Outsiders.”

  “You don’t like Outsiders?”

  “No, Master. I hate The People, but even more I hate Outsiders.”

  “Don’t call me master,” Ewick said. “My title is Administrator.” He jotted down notes while the native worked. It seemed impossible for a people to be so singularly unappetizing, so amazingly uncooperative. He watched, while the native made vague motions with his hoe, barely scratching the ground.

  “Put your back into it,” Ewick urged. “Have you got any fraternal organizations?”

  “Any what, Master?”

  Ewick explained.

  “No, Master. We are all one. We are The People. But no one likes anyone else well enough to be with.”

  “Then why do you call yourselves The People? Are you proud of that?”

  “No!” the old Selgen replied, and spat on the ground. “I detest all my people. But still, we are better than any others. We are better than Outsiders.”

  “Like the Masters?” Ewick asked.

  The native didn’t answer, which to Ewick seemed answer enough.

  “Come on, get at it,” Ewick said. These people had the damnedest twisted logic he had ever listened to. If there ever was a psychotic race, he decided, this was it.

  “Harder, dig!” he insisted because the native was barely scratching the soil.

  Ewick walked on. He watched for a while, then realized that no one was working! They were tapping the earth with their hoes, going through the motions, watching to make sure they weren’t doing more work than anyone else.

  “Get the hell to work, damn it!” Ewick roared. It infuriated him to realize that if they didn’t get the seeds in there would be no crops. If there were no crops—Colonial would blame him, of course.

  “Yes, Master,” the natives chorused in their mocking voices, and went back to scratching the soft earth.

  “And don’t call me that.” He would really have a paper to write on these creatures, he told himself. They seemed to be one big ingroup, brothers in hate, with himself and Fluff in the out-group.

  “Come on, hit that ground.” He searched his mind for a threat, then remembered that primitives were usually superstitious.

  “If you don’t work, the devils will come down and grab you.”

  The Selgens grinned at him.

  One of them spat on the ground.

  “What’s the matter?” Ewick asked.

  “There are no devils, Master,” a native said.

  “Nor are there any gods,” another piped in.

  “There can be nothing greater than myself,” the first said. “Nothing in the universe.”

  “You lying toad!” another shouted. “There is nothing greater than I! How could there be?”

  The two glared at each other, swinging their hoes ominously.

  “Take it easy,” Ewick said.

  “Horrible beast!”

  “Mass of lice!”

  They danced up and down in rage, waving their spades and hoes, but taking care not to hit one another. Ewick knew from his indoctrination lectures that the natives would never use violence. They were too cowardly, too afraid of retaliation.

  “And you—you are a rat also!” another native said suddenly to one beside him.

  The air was filled with waving hoes; carefully waving hoes, for not a Selgen was touched.

  “Stop it!” Ewick roared. “Stop it, you damned fools!”

  The natives stopped, and favored him with a communal wave of hate.

  “Although I detest you,” one said to another, “I detest the Master even more.”

  “We are united in that, you despicable animal,” the native answered.

  “Get back to work,” Ewick shouted, trembling with rage.

  He walked back to Colonial House. Outside the door, Fluff was sunning herself, snarling occasionally at the native animals when they came too close. Ewick went inside and closed the door.
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br />   He tried to rest, but the humidity was impossible. He sat down, took his chemistry book and tried to study.

  Oxidation is an algebraic increase in the oxidation number of an element, and, therefore, involves a loss of electrons by the element oxidized. Conversely, an element is reduced when its oxidation number is decreased, and, therefore, its atoms—

  Impossible. The words didn’t make any sense to him. Valences, oxidations. Wasn’t that what was happening to his rifle? The barrel was pitted deeply with rust. Ewick tried to figure out why. Oxygen combining with the iron, forming ferrous oxide, was that it? Or was it ferric oxide?

  Anyhow, there was a hell of a lot of air and damned little steel. So the air was taking over. Not that he could pass a chem exam with an answer like that.

  He threw down the book in disgust. It was too hot and sticky to read, and he was too upset. He stretched out on the bed, looking at the picture of his wife.

  At least, he thought, scratching the stubble on his chin, at least she’s waiting for me. Of course, it was partly her fault that he was here. If she hadn’t been so infernally ambitious for him.

  Outside the clouds were thick with rain that refused to fall. The natives worked and cursed . . .

  Ewick sweated ten pounds off his lean frame, standing over the Selgens and shouting them back to work. A thousand of them did in a week what would take three Earthmen a day.

  By shouting, roaring and bullying, he got them to dig the fields and plant the crops. The Selgens continued calling him Master, because they knew how much it annoyed him.

  Ewick’s mention of the devils was the greatest possible joke for the atheistic Selgens, who were unable to conceive anything greater than themselves. They took immense pleasure in pointing out the stupidity of Ewick’s ways.

  After a month of this, Ewick gave up taking notes in the field.

  The idea of being schooled in sophistry by a pack of illiterates almost drove him to distraction. After another month he had to hold himself in check. He had the overpowering urge to smash a few faces every time he went into the fields.

  Then the natives found something else to bother him with.