Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  Bentley opened the port. A cry of astonishment came from the Telians. His linguascene, after a few seconds’ initial hesitation, translated the cries as, “Oh! Ah! How strange! Unbelievable! Ridiculous! Shockingly improper!”

  Bentley descended the ladder on the ship’s side, carefully balancing his 148 pounds of excess weight. The natives formed a semicircle around him, their weapons ready.

  He advanced on them. They shrank back. Smiling pleasantly, he said, “I come as a friend.” The linguascene barked out the harsh consonants of the Telian language.

  They didn’t seem to believe him. Spears were poised and one Telian, larger than the others and wearing a colorful headdress, held a hatchet in readiness.

  Bentley felt the slightest tremor run through him. He was invulnerable, of course. There was nothing they could do to him, as long as he wore the Protec. Nothing! Professor Sliggert had been certain of it.

  BEFORE takeoff, Professor Sliggert had strapped the Protec to Bentley’s back, adjusted the straps and stepped back to admire his brainchild.

  “Perfect,” he had announced with quiet pride.

  Bentley had shrugged his shoulders under the weight. “Kind of heavy, isn’t it?”

  “But what can we do?” Sliggert asked him. “This is the first of its kind, the prototype. I have used every weight-saving device possible—transistors, light alloys, printed circuits, pencil-power packs and all the rest. Unfortunately, early models of any invention are invariably bulky.”

  “Seems as though you could have streamlined it a bit,” Bentley objected, peering over his shoulder.

  “Streamlining comes much later. First must be concentration, then compaction, then group-function, and finally styling. It’s always been that way and it will always be. Take the typewriter. Now it is simply a keyboard, almost as flat as a briefcase. But the prototype typewriter worked with foot pedals and required the combined strength of several men to lift. Take the hearing aid, which actually shrank pounds through the various stages of its development. Take the lingua-scene, which began as a very massive, complicated electronic calculator weighing several tons—”

  “Okay,” Bentley broke in. “If this is the best you could make it, good enough. How do I get out of it?”

  Professor Sliggert smiled.

  Bentley reached around. He couldn’t find a buckle. He pulled ineffectually at the shoulder straps, but could find no way of undoing them. Nor could he squirm out. It was like being in a new and fiendishly efficient strait jacket.

  “Come on, Professor, how do I get it off?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Protec is uncomfortable, is it not?” Sliggert asked. “You would rather not wear it?”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “Of course. Did you know that in wartime, on the battlefield, soldiers have a habit of discarding essential equipment because it is bulky or uncomfortable? But we can’t take chances on you. You are going to an alien planet, Mr. Bentley. You will be exposed to wholly unknown dangers. It is necessary that you be protected at all times.”

  “I know that,” Bentley said. “I’ve got enough sense to figure out when to wear this thing.”

  “But do you? We selected you for attributes such as resourcefulness, stamina, physical strength—and, of course, a certain amount of intelligence. But—”

  “Thanks!”

  “But those qualities do not make you prone to caution. Suppose you found the natives seemingly friendly and decided to discard the heavy, uncomfortable Protec? What would happen if you had misjudged their attitude? This is very easy to do on Earth; think how much easier it will be on an alien planet!”

  “I can take care of myself,” Bentley said.

  SLIGGERT nodded grimly.

  “That is what Atwood said when he left for Durabella II and we have never heard from him again. Nor have we heard from Blake, or Smythe, or Korishell. Can you turn a knife-thrust from the rear? Have you eyes in the back of your head? No, Mr.

  Bentley, you haven’t—but the Protec has!”

  “Look,” Bentley had said, “believe it or not, I’m a responsible adult. I will wear the Protec at all times when on the surface of an alien planet. Now tell me how to get it off.”

  “You don’t seem to realize something, Bentley. If only your life were at stake, we would let you take what risks seemed reasonable to you. But we are also risking several billion dollars’ worth of spaceship and equipment. Moreover, this is the Protec’s field test. The only way to be sure of the results is to have you wear it all the time. The only way to ensure that is by not telling you how to remove it. We want results. You are going to stay alive whether you like it or not.”

  Bentley had thought it over and agreed grudgingly. “I guess I might be tempted to take it off, if the natives were really friendly.”

  “You will be spared that temptation. Now do you understand how it works?”

  “Sure,” Bentley said. “But will it really do all you say?”

  “It passed the lab tests perfectly.”

  “I’d hate to have some little thing go wrong. Suppose it pops a fuse or blows a wire?”

  “That is one of the reasons for its bulk,” Sliggert explained patiently. “Triple everything. We are taking no chance of mechanical failure.

  “And the power supply?”

  “Good for a century or better at full load. The Protec is perfect, Bentley! After this field test, I have no doubt it will become standard equipment for all extraterrestrial explorers.” Professor Sliggert permitted himself a faint smile of pride.

  “All right,” Bentley had said, moving his shoulders under the wide plastic straps. “I’ll get used to it.”

  But he hadn’t. A man just doesn’t get used to a seventy-three-pound monkey on his back.

  THE Telians didn’t know what to make of Bentley. They argued for several minutes, while the explorer kept a strained smile on his face. Then one Telian stepped forward. He was taller than the others and wore a distinctive headdress made of glass, bones and bits of rather garishly painted wood.

  “My friends,” the Telian said, “there is an evil here which I, Rinek, can sense.”

  Another Telian wearing a similar headdress stepped forward and said, “It is not well for a ghost doctor to speak of such things.”

  “Of course not,” Rinek admitted. “It is not well to speak of evil in the presence of evil, for evil then grows strong. But a ghost doctor’s work is the detection and avoidance of evil. In this work, we must persevere, no matter what the risk.”

  Several other men in the distinctive headdress, the ghost doctors, had come forward now. Bentley decided that they were the Telian equivalent of priests and probably wielded considerable political power as well.

  “I don’t think he’s evil,” a young and cheerful-looking ghost doctor named Huascl said.

  “Of course he is. Just look at him.”

  “Appearances prove nothing, as we know from the time the good spirit Ahut M’Kandi appeared in the form of a—”

  “No lectures, Huascl. All of us know the parables of Lalland. The point is, can we take a chance?”

  Huascl turned to Bentley. “Are you evil?” the Telian asked earnestly.

  “No,” Bentley said. He had been puzzled at first by the Telians’ intense preoccupation with his spiritual status. They hadn’t even asked him where he’d come from, or how, or why. But then, it was not so strange. If an alien had landed on Earth during certain periods of religious zeal, the first question asked might have been, “Are you a creature of God or of Satan?”

  “He says he’s not evil,” Huascl said.

  “How would he know?”

  “If he doesn’t, who does?”

  “Once the great spirit G’tal presented a wise man with three kdal and said to him—”

  And on it went. Bentley found his legs beginning to bend under the weight of all his equipment. The linguascene was no longer able to keep pac
e with the shrill theological discussion that raged around him. His status seemed to depend upon two or three disputed points, none of which the ghost doctors wanted to talk about, since to talk about evil was in itself dangerous.

  To make matters more complicated, there was a schism over the concept of the penetrability of evil, the younger ghost doctors holding to one side, the older to the other. The factions accused each other of rankest heresy, but Bentley couldn’t figure out who believed what or which interpretation aided him.

  WHEN the sun drooped low over the grassy plain, the battle still raged. Then, suddenly, the ghost doctors reached an agreement, although Bentley couldn’t decide why or on what basis.

  Huascl stepped forward as spokesman for the younger ghost doctors.

  “Stranger,” he declared, “we have decided not to kill you.”

  Bentley suppressed a smile. That was just like a primitive people, granting life to an invulnerable being!

  “Not yet, anyhow,” Huascl amended quickly, catching a frown upon Rinek and the older ghost doctors. “It depends entirely upon you. We will go to the village and purify ourselves and we will feast. Then we will initiate you into the society of ghost doctors. No evil thing can become a ghost doctor; it is expressly forbidden. In this manner, we will detect your true nature.”

  “I am deeply grateful,” Bentley said.

  “But if you are evil, we are pledged to destroy evil. And if we must, we can!”

  The assembled Telians cheered his speech and began at once the mile trek to the village. Now that a status had been assigned Bentley, even tentatively, the natives were completely friendly. They chatted amiably with him about crops, droughts and famines.

  Bentley staggered along under his equipment, tired, but inwardly elated. This was really a coup! As an initiate, a priest, he would have an unsurpassed opportunity to gather anthropological data, to establish trade, to pave the way for the future development of Tels IV.

  All he had to do was pass the initiation tests. And not get killed, of course, he reminded himself, smiling.

  It was funny how positive the ghost doctors had been that they could kill him.

  The village consisted of two dozen huts arranged in a rough circle. Beside each mud-and-thatch hut was a small vegetable garden, and sometimes a pen for the Telian version of cattle. There were small green-furred animals roaming between the huts, which the Telians treated as pets. The grassy central area was common ground. Here was the community well and here were the shrines to various gods and devils. In this area, lighted by a great bonfire, a feast had been laid out by the village women.

  BENTLEY arrived at the feast in a state of near-exhaustion, stooped beneath his essential equipment. Gratefully, he sank to the ground with the villagers and the celebration began.

  First the village women danced a welcoming for him. They made a pretty sight, their orange skin glinting in the firelight, their tails swinging gracefully in unison. Then a village dignitary named Occip came over to him, bearing a full bowl.

  “Stranger,” Occip said, “you are from a distant land and your ways are not our ways. Yet let us be brothers! Partake, therefore, of this food to seal the bond between us, and in the name of all sanctity!”

  Bowing low, he offered the bowl.

  It was an important moment, one of those pivotal occasions that can seal forever the friendship between races or make them eternal enemies. But Bentley was not able to take advantage of it. As tactfully as he could, he refused the symbolic food.

  “But it is purified!” Occip said.

  Bentley explained that, because of a tribal taboo, he could eat only his own food. Occip could not understand that different species have different dietary requirements. For example, Bentley pointed out, the staff of life on Tels IV might well be some strychnine compound. But he did not add that even if he wanted to take the chance, his Protec would never allow it.

  Nonetheless, his refusal alarmed the village. There were hurried conferences among the ghost doctors. Then Rinek came over and sat beside him.

  “Tell me,” Rinek inquired after a while, “what do you think of evil?”

  “Evil is not good,” Bentley said solemnly.

  “Ah!” The ghost doctor pondered that, his tail flicking nervously over the grass. A small green-furred pet, a mog, began to play with his tail. Rinek pushed him away and said, “So you do not like evil.”

  “No.”

  “And you would permit no evil influence around you?”

  “Certainly not,” Bentley said, stifling a yawn. He was growing bored with the ghost doctor’s tortuous examining.

  “In that case, you would have no objection to receiving the sacred and very holy spear that Kran K’leu brought down from the abode of the Small Gods, the brandishing of which confers good upon a man.”

  “I would be pleased to receive it,” said Bentley, heavy-eyed, hoping this would be the last ceremony of the evening.

  Rinek grunted his approval and moved away. The women’s dances came to an end. The ghost doctors began to chant in deep, impressive voices. The bonfire flared high.

  Huascl came forward. His face was now painted in thin black and white stripes. He carried an ancient spear of black wood, its head of shaped volcanic glass, its length intricately although primitively carved.

  HOLDING the spear aloft, Huascl said, “O Stranger from the Skies, accept from us this spear of sanctity! Kran K’leu gave this lance to Trin, our first father, and bestowed upon it a magical nature and caused it to be a vessel of the spirits of the good. Evil cannot abide the presence of this spear! Take, then, our blessings with it.”

  Bentley heaved himself to his feet. He understood the value of a ceremony like this. His acceptance of the spear should end, once and for all, any doubts as to his spiritual status. Reverently he inclined his head.

  Huascl came forward, held out the spear and—

  The Protec snapped into action.

  Its operation was simple, in common with many great inventions. When its calculator-component received a danger cue, the Protec threw a force field around its operator. This field rendered him invulnerable, for it was completely and absolutely impenetrable. But there were certain unavoidable disadvantages.

  If Bentley had had a weak heart, the Protec might have killed him there and then, for its action was electronically sudden, completely unexpected and physically wrenching. One moment, he was standing in front of the great bonfire, his hand held out for the sacred spear. In the next moment, he was plunged into darkness.

  As usual, he felt as though he had been catapulted into a musty, lightless closet, with rubbery walls pressing close on all sides. He cursed the machine’s super-efficiency. The spear had not been a threat; it was part of an important ceremony. But the Protec, with its literal senses, had interpreted it as a possible danger.

  Now, in the darkness, Bentley fumbled for the controls that would release the field. As usual, the force field interfered with his positional sense, a condition that seemed to grow worse with each subsequent use. Carefully he felt his way along his chest, where the button should have been, and located it at last under his right armpit, where it had twisted around to. He released the field.

  The feast had ended abruptly. The natives were standing close together for protection, weapons ready, tails stretched stiffly out. Huascl, caught in the force field’s range, had been flung twenty feet and was slowly picking himself up.

  The ghost doctors began to chant a purification dirge, for protection against evil spirits. Bentley couldn’t blame them.

  When a Protec force field goes on, it appears as an opaque black sphere, some ten feet in diameter. If it is struck, it repels with a force equal to the impact. White lines appear in the sphere’s surface, swirl, coalesce, vanish. And as the sphere spins, it screams in a thin, high-pitched wail.

  All in all, it was a sight hardly calculated to win the confidence of a primitive and superstitious people.

  “Sorry,” Bentley said, with a w
eak smile. There hardly seemed anything else to say.

  HUASCL limped back, but kept his distance. “You cannot accept the sacred spear,” he stated.

  “Well, it’s not exactly that,” said Bentley. “It’s just—well, I’ve got this protective device, kind of like a shield, you know? It doesn’t like spears. Couldn’t you offer me a sacred gourd?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Huascl said. “Who ever heard of a sacred gourd?”

  “No, I guess not. But please take my word for it—I’m not evil. Really I’m not. I’ve just got a taboo about spears.”

  The ghost doctors talked among themselves too rapidly for the linguascene to interpret. It caught only the words “evil,” “destroy,” and “purification.” Bentley decided his forecast didn’t look too favorable.

  After the conference, Huascl came over to him and said, “Some of the others feel that you should be killed at once, before you bring some great unhappiness upon the village. I told them, however, that you cannot be blamed for the many taboos that restrict you. We will pray for you through the night. And perhaps, in the morning, the initiation will be possible.”

  Bentley thanked him. He was shown to a hut and then the Telians left him as quickly as possible. There was an ominous hush over the village; from his doorway, Bentley could see little groups of natives talking earnestly and glancing covertly in his direction.

  It was a poor beginning for cooperation between two races.

  He immediately contacted Professor Sliggert and told him what had happened.

  “Unfortunate,” the professor said. “But primitive people are notoriously treacherous. They might have meant to kill you with the spear instead of actually handing it to you. Let you have it, that is, in the most literal sense.”

  “I’m positive there was no such intention,” Bentley said. “After all, you have to start trusting people sometime.”

  “Not with a billion dollars’ worth of equipment in your charge.”

  “BUT I’m not going to be able to do anything!” Bentley shouted. “Don’t you understand? They’re suspicious of me already. I wasn’t able to accept their sacred spear. That means I’m very possibly evil. Now what if I can’t pass the initiation ceremony tomorrow? Suppose some idiot starts to pick his teeth with a knife and the Protec saves me? All the favorable first impression I built up will be lost.”