“That’s bad,” Morrison said softly.
“Yes sir.” The men stood in quiet groups, looking at him.
“What do we do now, sir?”
Morrison shut his eyes tightly for a moment, then said, “Get back to your tents and stand by.”
They melted into the darkness. Rivera looked questioningly at him. Morrison said, “Bring Lerner here.” As soon as Rivera left, he turned to the radio, and began to draw in his outposts.
He had a suspicion that something was coming, so the tornado that burst over the camp half an hour later didn’t take him completely by surprise. He was able to get most of his men into the ships before their tents blew away. Lerner pushed his way into Morrison’s temporary headquarters in the radio room of the flagship. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you what’s up,” Morrison said. “A range of dead volcanoes ten miles from here are erupting. The weather station reports a tidal wave coming that’ll flood half this continent. We shouldn’t have earthquakes here, but I suppose you felt the first tremor. And that’s only the beginning.”
“But what is it?” Lerner asked. “What’s doing it?”
“Haven’t you got Earth yet?” Morrison asked the radio operator.
“Still trying.”
Rivera burst in. “Just two more sections to go,” he reported.
“When everyone’s on a ship, let me know.”
“What’s going on?” Lerner screamed. “Is this my fault too?”
“I’m sorry about that,” Morrison said.
“Got something,” the radioman said. “Hold on . . .”
“Morrison!” Lerner screamed. “Tell me!”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Morrison said. “It’s too big for me. But Dengue could tell you.”
Morrison closed his eyes and imagined Dengue standing in front of him. Dengue was smiling disdainfully, and saying, “Read here the saga of the jellyfish that dreamed it was a god. Upon rising from the ocean beach, the super-jellyfish which called itself Man decided that, because of its convoluted gray brain, it was the superior of all. And having thus decided, the jellyfish slew the fish of the sea and the beasts of the field, slew them prodigiously, to the complete disregard of nature’s intent. And then the jellyfish bored holes in the mountains and pressed heavy cities upon the groaning earth, and hid the green grass under a concrete apron. And then, increasing in numbers past all reason, the spaceborn jellyfish went to other worlds, and there he did destroy mountains, build up plains, shift whole forests, redirect rivers, melt ice caps, mold continents, dig new seas, and in these and other ways did deface the great planets which, next to the stars, are nature’s noblest work. Now nature is old and slow, but very sure. So inevitably there came a time when nature had enough of the presumptuous jellyfish, and his pretension to godhood. And therefore, the time came when a great planet whose skin he pierced rejected him, cast him out, spit him forth. That was the day the jellyfish found, to his amazement, that he had lived all his days in the sufferance of powers past his conception, upon an exact par with the creatures of plain and swamp, no worse than the flowers, no better than the weeds, and that it made no difference to the universe whether he lived or died, and all his vaunted record of works done was no more than the tracks an insect leaves in the sand.”
“What is it?” Lerner begged.
“I think the planet didn’t want us any more,” Morrison said. “I think it had enough.”
“I got Earth!” the radio operator called. “Go ahead, Morrie.”
“Shotwell? Listen, we can’t stick it out,” Morrison said into the receiver.
“I’m getting my men out of here while there’s still time. I can’t explain it to you now—I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to—”
“The planet can’t be used at all?” Shotwell asked.
“No. Not a chance. Sir; I hope this doesn’t jeopardize the firm’s standing—”
“Oh, to hell with the firm’s standing,” Mr. Shotwell said. “It’s just that—you don’t know what’s been going on here, Morrison. You know our Gobi project? In ruins, every bit of it. And it’s not just us. I don’t know, I just don’t know. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not speaking coherently, but ever since Australia sank—”
“What?”
“Yes, sank, sank I tell you. Perhaps we should have suspected something with the hurricanes. But then the earthquakes—but we just don’t know any more.”
“But Mars? Venus? Alpha Centauri?”
“The same everywhere. But we can’t be through, can we, Morrison? I mean, Mankind—”
“Hello, hello,” Morrison called: “What happened?” he asked the operator.
“They conked out,” the operator said. “I’ll try again.”
“Don’t bother,” Morrison said. Just then Rivera dashed in.
“Got every last man on board,” he said. “The ports are sealed. We’re all set to go, Mr. Morrison.”
They were all looking at him. Morrison slumped back in his chair and grinned helplessly.
“We’re all set,” he said. “But where shall we go?”
1956
THE BODY
They made it—no question of that—but what had they made?
WHEN PROFESSOR Meyer opened his eyes he saw, leaning anxiously over him, three of the young specialists who had performed the operation. It struck him at once that they would have to be young to attempt what they had attempted; young and irreverent, possessed of encyclopedic technical knowledge to the exclusion of all else; iron-nerved, steel-fingered, inhuman, in fact. They had the qualifications of automatons.
He was so struck by this bit of post-anesthetic reasoning that it took him a moment to realize that the operation had been a success. “How do you feel, sir?”
“Are you all right?”
“Can you speak, sir? If not, just nod your head. Or blink.”
They watched anxiously. Professor Meyer gulped, testing the limitations of his new palate, tongue and throat. Then he said, very thickly, “I think—I think—”
“He’s all right!” Cassidy shouted. “Feldman! Wake up!”
Feldman leaped up from the spare cot and fumbled for his glasses. “He’s up so soon? Did he speak?”
“Yes, he spoke! He spoke like an angel! We finally made it, Freddie!”
Feldman found his glasses and rushed to the operating table. “Could you say something else, sir? Anything?”
“I am—I am—”
“Oh, God,” Feldman said. “I think I’m going to faint.”
The three men burst into laughter. They surrounded Feldman and slapped him on the back. Feldman began to laugh, too, but soon he was coughing violently.
“Where’s Kent?” Cassidy shouted. “He should be here, damn it. He kept that damned ossilyscope on the line for ten solid hours. Steadiest thing I ever saw. Where the devil is he?”
“He went after sandwiches,” Lupowicz said. “Here he comes. Kent, Kent, we made it!”
Kent came through the door carrying two paper bags, with half a sandwich thrust in his mouth. He swallowed convulsively. “Did he speak? What did he say?”
BEHIND KENT, there was an uproar. A dozen men rushed toward the door.
“Get them out of here!” Feldman screamed. “They can’t interview him tonight. Where’s that cop?”
A policeman pushed his way through and blocked the door. “You heard what the docs said, boys.”
“This isn’t fair. This Meyer, he belongs to the world.”
“What were his first words?”
“What did he say?”
“Did you really change him into a dog?”
“What kind of dog?”
“Can he wag his tail?”
“He said he was fine,” the policeman told them, blocking the door. “Come on now, boys.”
A photographer ducked under the policeman’s arm. He looked at Professor Meyer on the operating table and muttered, “Jesus!” He raised his camera. “Lo
ok up, boy—”
Kent put his hand over the lens as the flashgun popped.
“Whatdja do that for?” the photographer asked.
“You now have a picture of Kent’s hand,” Kent said with sarcasm. “Enlarge it, and hang it in the Museum of Modern Art. Now, get out of here before I break your neck.”
“Come on, boys,” the policeman repeated sternly, herding the newsmen away. He turned back and glanced at Professor Meyer on the operating table. “Jesus! I still can’t believe it!” he muttered, and closed the door.
“The bottles!” Cassidy shouted.
“A celebration!”
“By God, we deserve a celebration!”
Professor Meyer smiled—internally only, of course, since his facial expressions were now limited.
Feldman came up to him. “How do you feel, sir?”
“I am fine,” Meyer said, enunciating carefully with his strange palate. “A little confused, perhaps—”
“But not regretful?” Feldman asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Meyer said. “I was against this on principle, you know. No man is indispensable.”
“You are, sir.” Feldman spoke with fierce conviction. “I followed your lectures. Not that I pretend to understand one tenth of what you were saying. Mathematical symbolism is only a hobby with me. But those unification principles—”
“Please,” Meyer said.
“NO, LET me speak, sir,” Feldman said. “You are carrying on the great work where Einstein and the others left off. No one else can complete it! No one! You had to have a few more years, in any form science could give you. I only wish we could have found a more suitable receptacle for your intellect. A human host was unavailable, and we were forced to rule out the primates—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Meyer said. “It’s the intellect that counts, after all. I’m still a little dizzy . . .”
“I remember your last lecture at Harvard,” Feldman continued, clenching his hands together. “You were so old, sir! I could have cried—that tired, ruined body—”
“Can we give you a drink, sir?” Cassidy offered Meyer a glass.
Meyer laughed. “I’m afraid my new facial configuration is not suited for glasses. A bowl would be preferable.”
“Right!” Cassidy said. “One bowl coming up! Lord, Lord . . .”
“You’ll have to excuse us, sir,” Feldman apologized. “The strain has been terrific. We’ve been in this room for over a week, and I doubt if one of us had eight hours sleep in that time. We almost lost you, sir—”
“The bowl! The flowing bowl is here!” Lupowicz called. “What’ll it be, sir? Rye? Gin?”
“Just water, please,” Meyer said. “Do you think I could get up?”
“If you’ll take it easy . . .” Lupowicz lifted him gently from the table and set him on the floor. Meyer balanced uneasily on his four legs.
The men cheered him wildly. “Bravo!”
“I believe I may be able to do some work tomorrow,” Meyer said. “Some sort of an apparatus will have to be devised to enable me to write. It shouldn’t be too difficult. There will be other problems attendant upon my change I’m not thinking too clearly as yet . . .”
“Don’t try to rush things.”
“Hell, no! Can’t lose you now!”
“What a paper this is going to make!”
“Collaborative effort, do you think, or each from his own viewpoint and specialty?”
“Both, both. They’ll never get enough of this. Goddamn it, they’ll be talking about this—”
“Where is the bathroom?” Meyer asked.
The men looked at each other.
“What for?”
“Shut up, you idiot. This way, sir. I’ll open the door for you.”
MEYER FOLLOWED at the man’s heels, perceiving, as he walked, the greater ease inherent in four-legged locomotion. When he returned, the men were talking heatedly about technical aspects of his case.
“—never again in a million years.”
“I can’t agree with you. Anything we can do once—”
“Don’t get scientific on us, kid. You know damned well it was a weird combination of fortuitous factors—plain blind luck!”
“You can say that again. Some of those bio-electric changes—”
“He’s back.”
“Yeah, but he shouldn’t be walking around too much. How you feeling, boy?”
“I’m not a boy,” Professor Meyer snapped. “I’m old enough to be your grandfather.”
“Sorry, sir. I think you should go to bed, sir.”
“Yes,” Professor Meyer said. “I’m not too strong yet, not too clear . . .”
Kent lifted him and placed him on the cot. “There, how’s that?” They gathered around him, their arms linked around each other’s shoulders. They were grinning, and very proud of themselves.
“Anything we can get you?”
“Just call for it, we’ll bring it.”
“Here, I’ve filled your bowl with water.”
“We’ll leave a couple. sandwiches by your cot.”
“Have a good rest,” Cassidy said tenderly.
Then, involuntarily, absent-mindedly, he patted Professor Meyer on his long, smooth-furred head.
Feldman shouted something incoherent.
“I forgot,” Cassidy said in embarrassed apology.
“We’ll have to watch ourselves. He’s a man, you know.”
“Of course I know. I must be tired . . . I mean, he looks so much like a dog, you kinda forget—”
“Get out of here!” Feldman ordered. “Get out! All of you!”
He pushed them out of the room and hurried back to Professor Meyer.
“Is there anything I can do, sir? Anything at all?”
Meyer tried to speak, to reaffirm his humanity. But the words came out choked.
“It’ll never happen again, sir.
I’m sure of it. Why, you’re—you’re Professor Meyer!”
Quickly Feldman pulled a blanket over Meyer’s shivering body.
“It’s all right, sir,” Feldman said, trying not to look at the shivering animal. “It’s the intellect that counts, sir. The mind!”
“Of course,” agreed Professor Meyer, the eminent mathematician. “But I wonder—would you mind patting my head for me, please?”
TRAP
Check your dictionary if you think “trap” is a simple and uncomplicated word . . . or read this for another definition!
SAMISH, I am in some need of assistance. The situation is potentially dangerous, so come at once.
It shows how right you were, Samish, old friend. I should never have trusted a Terran. They are a sly, ignorant, irresponsible race, just as you have always pointed out.
Nor are they as stupid as they seem. I am beginning to believe that the slenderness of the tentacle is not the only criterion of intelligence.
What a sorry mess, Samish! And the plan seemed so foolproof . . .
Ed Dailey saw a gleam of metal outside his cabin door, but he was still too sleepy to investigate.
He had awakened shortly after daybreak and tiptoed outside for a glimpse at the weather.
It was unpromising. There had been a heavy rain during the night and water dripped from every leaf and branch of the surrounding forest. His station wagon had a drowned look and the dirt road leading up the mountainside was a foot-thick in mud.
His friend Thurston came to the door in pajamas, his round face flushed with sleep and Buddhalike in its placidity.
“It always rains on the first day of a vacation,” Thurston stated. “Rule of nature.”
“Might be a good day for trout,” Dailey said.
“It might. But it is a better day for building a roaring fire in the fireplace and drinking hot buttered rum.”
FOR eleven years, they had been taking a short autumn vacation together, but for different reasons.
Dailey had a romantic love for equipment. The clerks in New York’s fancier sports
shops hung expensive parkas on his high, stooped shoulders, parkas such as one would wear on the trail of the Abominable Snowman in the fastnesses of Tibet. They sold him ingenious little stoves that would burn through a hurricane and wickedly curved knives of the best Swedish steel.
Dailey loved to feel a lean canteen against his side and a blued-steel rifle over his shoulder. But the canteen usually contained rum and the rifle was used against nothing deadlier than tin cans. For in spite of his dreams, Dailey was a friendly man, with no malice toward bird or beast.
His friend Thurston was overweight and short of wind, and burdened himself only with the lightest of fly rods and the smallest of shotguns. By the second week, he usually managed to steer the hunt to Lake Placid, to the cocktail lounges that were his true environment. There, with an incredible knowledge of spoor and lair, he placidly hunted the pretty vacationing girls instead of the brown bear, the black bear, or the mountain deer.
This mild exercise was more than adequate for two soft and successful businessmen on the wrong side of forty, and they returned to the city tanned and refreshed, with a new lease on life and a renewed tolerance for their wives.
“Rum it is,” Dailey said. “What’s that?” He had noticed the gleam of metal near the cabin.
Thurston walked over and poked the object with his foot. “Odd-looking thing.”
Dailey parted the grass and saw an open framework box about four feet square, constructed of metal strips, and hinged on top. Written boldly on one of the strips was the single word TRAP.
“Where did you buy that?” Thurston asked.
“I didn’t.” Dailey found a plastic tag attached to one of the metal strips. He pulled it loose and read: “Dear Friend, this is a new and revolutionary design in a TRAP. To introduce the TRAP to the general public, we are giving you this model absolutely free! You will find it a unique and valuable device for the capture of small game, provided you follow precisely the directions on the other side. Good luck and good hunting!”
“If this isn’t the strangest thing,” Dailey said. “Do you suppose it was left during the night?”
“Who cares?” Thurston shrugged. “My stomach is rumbling. Let’s make breakfast.”
Various Fiction Page 113