Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “The Elders have authorized me,” he said, “to offer you an alliance of blood brotherhood. You and I, representing the leading clans of our peoples, will mingle our blood together in a beautiful and highly symbolic ceremony, then break bread, take salt—”

  “Sorry,” Danton said. “We New Tahitians don’t hold with that sort of thing. It has to be marriage.”

  “But damn it all, man—”

  “That is my last word.”

  “We’ll never accept! Never!”

  “Then it’s war,” Danton declared and walked into the jungle.

  He was in a mood for making war. But how, he asked himself, does a single native fight against a spaceship full of armed men?

  He was brooding on this when Simeon and Anita came to him through the jungle.

  “All right,” Simeon said angrily. “The Elders have decided. We Hutters are sick of running from planet to planet. We’ve had this problem before, and I suppose we’d just go somewhere else and have it again. We’re sick and tired of the whole native problem, so I guess—” he gulped hard, but manfully finished the sentence—“we’d better assimilate. At least, that’s what the Elders think. Personally, I’d rather fight.”

  “You’d lose,” Danton assured him, and at that moment he felt he could take on the Hutters single-handed and win.

  “Maybe so,” Simeon admitted. “Anyhow, you can thank Anita for making the peace possible.”

  “Anita? Why?”

  “Why, man, she’s the only girl in the camp who’d marry a naked, dirty, heathen savage!”

  AND so they were married, and Danta, now known as the White Man’s Friend, settled down to help the Hutters conquer their new land. They, in turn, introduced him to the marvels of civilization. He was taught Twelve-hand Bridge and Mass Dancing. And soon the Hutters built their first Subway—for a civilized people must release their aggressions—and that game was shown to Danta, too.

  He tried to master the spirit of the classic Earth pastime, but it was obviously beyond the comprehension of his savage soul. Civilization stifled him, so Danta and his wife moved across the planet, always following the frontier, staying far from the amenities of civilization.

  Anthropologists frequently came to visit him. They recorded all the stories he told his children, the ancient and beautiful legends of New Tahiti—tales of sky gods and water demons, fire sprites and woodland nymphs, and how Katamandura was ordered to create the world out of nothingness in just three days, and what his reward for this was, and what Jevasi said to Hootmenlati when they met in the underworld, and the strange outcome of this meeting.

  The anthropologists noted similarities between these legends and certain legends of Earth, and several interesting theories were put forth. And they were interested in the great sandstone statues on the main island of New Tahiti, weird and haunting works which no viewer could forget, clearly the work of a pre–New Tahitian race, of whom no trace could ever be found.

  But most fascinating of all for the scientific workers was the problem of the New Tahitians themselves. Those happy, laughing, bronzed savages, bigger, stronger, handsomer, and healthier than any other race, had melted away at the coming of the white man. Only a few of the older Hutters could remember having met them in any numbers, and their tales were considered none too reliable.

  “My people?” Danta would say, when questioned. “Ah, they could not stand the white man’s diseases, the white man’s mechanical civilization, the white man’s harsh and repressive ways. They are in a happier place now, in Valhoola beyond the sky. And someday I shall go there, too.”

  And white men, hearing this, experienced strangely guilty feelings and redoubled their efforts to show kindness to Danta, the Last Native.

  1957

  ALONE AT LAST

  They all insisted that only a madman could exist alone on an asteroid. Well, he did prove they were wrong . . .

  THE ANNUAL Io ship was already in blast position, and swarms of androids labored over the final ground details. A crowd had gathered to watch the event, to stand close together and be amused. Horns sounded, a warning siren began to shriek. Confetti poured from the last unsealed ports, and long silver and red streamers. From a loudspeaker came the hearty voice of the ship’s captain—a human, of coarse—saying, “All ashore that’s going ashore!”

  In the midst of this joyous confusion stood Richard Arwell, perspiration pouring down his face, baggage heaped around him and more arriving every minute, barred from the ship by a ridiculous little government official.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid I must refuse permission,” the official was saying, with a certain unction.

  Arwell’s spacepass was signed and countersigned, his ticket was paid and vouchered. To reach this point he had waited at a hundred doors, explained himself to a hundred ignorant flunkies, and somehow won past them all. And now, at the very threshold of success, he was faced with failure.

  “My papers are in order,” Arwell pointed out, with a calmness he did not feel.

  “They seem to be in order,” the official said judiciously. “But your destination is so preposterous—”

  At that moment a robot porter lumbered up with the packing case that contained Arwell’s personal android.

  “Careful with that,” Arwell said.

  The robot set it down with a resounding thud.

  “Idiot!” Arwell screamed. “Incompetent fool!” He turned to the official. “Can’t they ever build one that will follow orders properly?”

  “That’s what my wife asked me the other day,” the official said, smiling sympathetically. “Just the other day our android—”

  The robot said, “Put these on the ship, sir?”

  “Not yet,” the little official said.

  The loudspeaker boomed, “Last call! All ashore!”

  The official picked up Arwell’s papers again. “Now then. This matter of destination. You really wish to go to an asteroid, sir?”

  “Precisely,” Arwell said. “I am going to live upon an asteroid, just as my papers state. If you would be good enough to sign them and let me aboard—”

  “But no one lives on the asteroids,” the official said. “There’s no colony.”

  “I know.”

  “There isn’t anyone on the asteroids!”

  “True.”

  “You would be alone.”

  “I wish to be alone,” Arwell said simply.

  The official stared at him in disbelief. “But consider the risk. No one is alone today.”

  “I will be. As soon as you sign that paper,” Arwell said. Looking toward the ship he saw that the ports were being sealed. “Please!”

  The official hesitated. The papers were in order, true. But to be alone—to be completely alone—was dangerous, suicidal.

  Still, it was undeniably legal.

  He scrawled his name. Instantly Arwell shouted, “Porter, porter! Load these on the ship. Hurry! And be careful with the android!”

  The porter lifted the case so abruptly that Arwell could hear the android’s head slam against the side. He winced, but there was no time for a reprimand. The final port was closing.

  “Wait!” Arwell screamed, and sprinted across the concrete apron, the robot porter thundering behind him. “Wait!” he screamed again, for a ship’s android was methodically closing the port, oblivious to Arwell’s unauthorized command. But a member of the human crew intervened, and the door’s progress was arrested. Arwell sprinted inside, and the robot hurled his baggage after him. The port closed.

  “Lie down!” the human crew member shouted. “Strap yourself. Drink this. We’re lifting.”

  As the ship trembled and rose, Arwell felt a tremendous drunken satisfaction surge through him. He had made it, he had won, and soon, very soon, he would be alone!

  BUT EVEN in space, Arwell’s troubles were not over. For the ship’s captain, a tall, erect, graying man, decided not to put him on an asteroid.

  “I simply cannot believe you know what y
ou are doing,” the captain said. “I beg you to reconsider.”

  They were sitting in upholstered chairs in the captain’s comfortable lounge. Arwell felt unutterably weary, looking at the captain’s smug, conventional face. Momentarily he considered strangling the man. But that would never bring him the solitude he desired. Somehow, he must convince this last dreary idiot.

  A robot attendant glided noiselessly behind the captain. “Drink, sir?” it asked, in its sharp metallic voice. The captain jumped abruptly.

  “Must you sneak up that way?” he asked the robot.

  “Sorry, sir,” the robot said. “Drink, sir?”

  Both men accepted drinks. “Why,” the captain mused, “can’t these mechanicals be trained better?”

  “I’ve often wondered that myself,” Arwell said, with a knowing smile.

  “This one,” the captain went on, “is a perfectly efficient servitor. And yet, he does have that ridiculous habit of creeping up in back of people.”

  “My own android,” Arwell said, “has a most annoying tremble in his left hand. Synaptic lag, I believe the technicians call it. One would think they could do something about it.”

  The captain shrugged. “Perhaps the new models . . . oh well.” He sipped his drink.

  Arwell sipped his own drink, and considered that an air of comradeship had been, established. He had shown the captain that he was not a wild-eyed eccentric; on the contrary, that his ideas were quite conventional. Now was the time to press his advantage.

  “I hope, sir,” he said, “that we will have no difficulties about the asteroid.”

  The captain looked annoyed. “Mr. Arwell,” he said, “you are asking me to do what is, essentially, an asocial act. To set you upon an asteroid would be a failure on my part as a human being. No one is alone in this day and age. We stay together. There is comfort in numbers, safety in quantity. We look after one another.”

  “Perfectly true,” Arwell said. “But you must allow room for individual differences. I am one of those rare few who honestly desires solitude. This may make me unusual; but certainly my wishes are to be respected.”

  “Hmm.” The captain looked earnestly at Arwell. “You think you desire solitude. But have you ever really experienced it?”

  “No,” Arwell admitted.

  “Ah. Then you can have no conception of the dangers, the very real dangers inherent to that state. Wouldn’t it be better, Mr. Arwell, to conform to the advantages of your day and age?”

  The captain went on to speak of the Great Peace, which had now lasted over two hundred years, and of the psychological stability that was its basis. Slightly red in the face, he orated on the healthy mutual symbiosis between Man, that socially integrated animal, and his creature, the serene working mechanical. He spoke of Man’s great task—the organization of the skills of his creatures.

  “Quite true,” Arwell said. “But not for me.”

  “Ah,” the captain said, smiling wisely, “but have you tried? Have you experienced the thrill of cooperation? Directing the harvest androids as they toil over the wheat fields, guiding their labor under the seas—healthy, satisfying work. Even the lowliest of tasks—being a foreman over twenty or thirty factory robots, say—is not devoid of its sensation of solid accomplishment. And this sensation can be shared and augmented by contact with one’s fellow humans.”

  “All that sort of thing is lacking in satisfaction for me,” Arwell said. “It’s just not for me. I want to spend the rest of my life alone, to read my books, to contemplate, to be on one tiny asteroid by myself.”

  The captain rubbed his eyes wearily. “Mr. Arwell,” he said, “I believe you are sane, and therefore master of your destiny. I cannot stop you. But consider! Solitude is dangerous to modern man. Insidiously, implacably dangerous. For that reason he has learned to shun it.”

  “It will not be dangerous for me,” Arwell said.

  “I hope not,” the captain said. “I sincerely hope not.”

  AT LAST the orbit of Mars was passed, and the asteroid belt was reached. With the captain’s help, Arwell picked out a good-sized chunk of rock. The ship matched velocities.

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” the captain asked.

  “Positive!” Arwell said, barely able to contain his eagerness with his solitude so close at hand.

  For the next few hours the helmeted crew transferred his gear from ship to asteroid and anchored it down. They set up his water producer and his air maker, and stowed his basic food components. At last they inflated the tough plastic bubble under which he would live, and proceeded to transfer his android.

  “Careful with it,” Arwell warned.

  Suddenly the crate slipped through the clumsy gauntleted hands of a robot, and began to drift away.

  “Get a line on that!” the captain shouted.

  “Hurry!” Arwell screamed, watching his precious mechanical drift into the vacuum of space.

  One of the human crew fired a line harpoon into the case and hauled it back, banging it roughly against the ship’s side. With no further delay, the case was secured upon the asteroid. At last, Arwell was ready to take possession of his own little private world.

  “I wish you would think about it,” the captain said gravely. “The dangers of solitude—”

  “Are all superstition,” Arwell said abruptly, anxious to be alone. “There are no dangers.”

  “I will return with more provisions in six months,” the captain said. “Believe me, there are dangers. It is no accident that modern man has avoided—”

  “May I go now?” Arwell asked.

  “Of course. And good luck,” the captain said.

  Spacesuited and helmeted, Arwell propelled himself to his tiny island in space, and from it watched the ship depart. When it became a dot of light no bigger than a star, he started to arrange his goods. First the android, of course. He hoped it wasn’t bruised, after all the rough handling it had undergone. Quickly he opened the case and activated the mechanical. The forehead dial showed that energy was accumulating. Good enough.

  He looked around. There was the asteroid, a lean black rock. There were his stores, his android, his food and water, his books. All around him was the immensity of space, the cold light of the stars, the faint sun, and the absolute black night.

  He shuddered slightly and turned away.

  His android was now activated. There was work to be done. But fascinated, he looked again into space.

  The ship, that faint star, was gone from sight. For the first time, Arwell experienced what he had before only faintly imagined: solitude, perfect, complete and utter solitude. The merciless diamond points of the stars glared at him from the depths of a night that would never end. There was no human near him—for all he knew’, the human race had ceased to exist. He was alone.

  It was a situation that could drive a man insane.

  Arwell loved it.

  “Alone at last!” he shouted to the stars.

  “Yes,” said his android, lurching to its feet and advancing on him. “Alone at last.”

  THE MARTYR

  There is no fate worse than death, eh? Well, maybe this will help change your mind!

  FRANK CADENA examined the tiny red dot which the hypodermic needle had left in his forearm. He said, “I don’t feel a thing.”

  “You’re not supposed to,” Dr. Mellen said. “No feeling is the proper feeling,” he added jovially. He was much bigger than Cadena and he exuded confidence. His large pale hands carried a faint aseptic odor of alcohol and green soap.

  His colleague, Dr. Santasiere, was seated at the desk. He was thin, sour-faced and very impersonal.

  Ignoring Cadena, he opened his little black bag and removed from it a Luger automatic, a silencer, an unmarked pillbox, a straight razor and a gas cylinder. Fussily, he arranged them on the desk, like tools on an operating table.

  “I really don’t feel a thing,” Cadena said quickly. “Maybe it didn’t take.”

  “Don’t ge
t nervous,” said Mellen in his soothing professional tones.

  Dr. Santasiere took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the butt of the Luger. Then he turned the handkerchief over and intently cleaned his pince-nez.

  CADENA WALKED to the window. They were in Dr. Mellen’s house, because it had seemed the safest place to conduct the last phase of the experiment. Outside was broad green lawn, and oak trees bordered the curved driveway, and Cadena could see two sparrows quarreling in the air.

  He licked his lips and rubbed the red dot on his forearm.

  “Well, shall we get on with it?” Dr. Santasiere asked.

  “Hold it, hold it,” Cadena said. “Maybe that stuff didn’t go to work yet.”

  “The effect is instantaneous,” Dr. Mellen assured him in a hearty but sympathetic voice.

  “Let’s give it a little more time to work,” Cadena begged. “Five minutes!”

  Dr. Santasiere frowned. “Since when does the patient dictate to the doctor?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dr. Mellen replied. “We’ll wait a few minutes if it will give you greater confidence, Frank.”

  “It sure will,” Cadena said. “It’ll sure do that.” He began to pace up and down the room, mechanically rubbing the red dot on his forearm.

  “You will irritate the puncture.” Dr. Santasiere automatically told him.

  Cadena all but giggled. “A hell of a lot that matters to me. Am I right? Does it really make any difference?”

  “It doesn’t matter at all,” Dr. Santasiere said. He began to polish the straight razor with the edge of his handkerchief.

  Cadena paced for a few moments more. Then he stopped abruptly and said, “Will you, for Pete’s sake, stop playing with that razor?”

  “No hysterics, Frank,” Dr. Mellen warned.

  “Tell him to stop playing with that damned razor.”

  “He has a point,” Dr. Mellen admitted. “One shouldn’t show a patient the operating tools, you know.”