Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  He could hardly believe it at first. But slowly, steadily, the dial hand crept down. At 160 miles an hour, the truck stopped slamming and lay passively at the end of its anchor line. At 153, the wind veered—a sure sign that the blow was nearly over.

  When it had dropped to 142 miles an hour, Clayton allowed himself the luxury of passing out.

  CARELLAN natives came out for him later in the day. Skillfully they maneuvered two big land ships up to the Brute, fastened on their long vines—which tested out stronger than steel—and towed the derelict truck back to the station.

  They brought him into the receiving shed, and Nerishev carried him into the station’s dead air.

  “You didn’t break anything except a couple of teeth,” said Nerishev. “But there isn’t an unbruised inch on you.”

  “We came through it,” Clayton said.

  “Just. Our boulder defense is completely flattened. The station took two direct hits from boulders and barely contained them. I’ve checked the foundations; they’re badly strained. Another blow like that—”

  “—and we’d make out somehow. Us Earth lads, we come through! That was the worst in eight months. Four months more and the relief ship comes! Buck up, Nerishev. Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to talk to that damned Smanik!”

  They came into the shed. It was filled to overflowing with Carellans. Outside, in the lee of the station, several dozen land ships were moored.

  “Smanik!” Clayton called. “What’s going on here?”

  “It is the Festival of Summer,” Smanik said. “Our great yearly holiday.”

  “Hm. What about that blow? What did you think of it?”

  “I would classify it as a moderate gale,” said Smanik. “Nothing dangerous, but somewhat unpleasant for sailing.”

  “Unpleasant! I hope you get your forecasts a little more accurate in the future.”

  “One cannot always outguess the weather,” Smanik said. “It is regrettable that my last forecast should be wrong.”

  “Your last? How come? What’s the matter?”

  “These people,” Smanik said, gesturing around him, “are my entire tribe, the Seremai. We have celebrated the Festival of Summer. Now summer is ended and we must go away.”

  “Where to?”

  “To the caverns in the far west. They are two weeks’ sail from here. We will go into the caverns and live there for three months. In that way, we will find safety.”

  Clayton had a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. “Safety from what, Smanik?”

  “I told you. Summer is over. We need safety now from the winds—the powerful storm winds of winter.”

  “What is it?” Nerishev said.

  “In a moment.” Clayton thought very quickly of the super-hurricane he had just passed through, which Smanik had classified as a moderate and harmless gale. He thought of their immobility, the ruined Brute, the strained foundations of the station, the wrecked boulder barrier, the relief ship four months away. “We could go with you in the land ships, Smanik, and take refuge in the caverns with you—be protected—”

  “Of course,” said Smanik hospitably.

  “No, we couldn’t,” Clayton answered himself, his sinking feeling even lower than during the storm. “We’d need extra oxygen, our own food, a water supply—”

  “What is it?” Nerishev repeated impatiently. “What the devil did he say to make you look like that?”

  “He says the really big winds are just coming,” Clayton replied.

  The two men stared at each other.

  Outside, a wind was rising.

  THE DEATHS OF BEN BAXTER

  The breath of an entire world literally hung upon whether he lived or died—and he infuriatingly refused to stay alive!

  EDWIN JAMES, the chief Programmer of Earth, had seated himself upon a little three-legged stool in front of the Probabilities Calculator. He was a small, spare man, impressively ugly, dwarfed by the great control board which soared a hundred feet above him.

  The steady hum. of the machine, the slow drift of lights across the face of the panel, brought a sense of security which he recognized as false, but which soothed him all the same. He had just started to doze off when the pattern of lights changed.

  He sat up with a start and rubbed his face. A paper tape inched from a slot in the panel. The Chief Programmer tore it off and scanned it. He nodded sourly to himself and walked quickly out of the room.

  Fifteen minutes later, he entered the meeting room of the World Planning Council. Summoned there by his order, the five representatives of the Federated Districts of Earth were seated around the long table, waiting for him.

  There was a new member this year, Roger Beatty, from the Americas. He was tall and angular and his bushy brown hair was just beginning to thin on top. He appeared eager, earnest and ill at ease. He was reading a procedural handbook and taking short, quick sniffs from his oxygen inhaler.

  James knew the other members well. Lan II from Pan-Asia, looking as small, wrinkled and indestructible as ever, was engaged in intense conversation with large, blond Dr. Sveg from Europe. Miss Chandragore, beautiful and sleek, was playing her inevitable game of chess with Aaui of Oceania.

  James turned up the room’s oxygen supply and the members gratefully put away their inhalers.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” James said, taking his seat at the head of the table. “The current prediction just came through.”

  He took a notebook from his pocket and opened it.

  “At our last meeting, we selected Alternate Probability Line 3B3CC, which began in the year 1832. The factor we were selecting for was the life of Albert Levinsky. In the Main Historic Line, Levinsky died in 1935 of an automobile accident. By switching into Alternate Probability Line 3B3CC, Levinsky avoided this accident and lived to the age of sixty-two, completing his work. The result now, in our own time, in the opening up of Antartica.”

  “What about side-effects?” asked Janna Chandragore.

  “Those are discussed in the paper you will be given later. Briefly, though, 3B3CC adhered closely to the Historic Main Line. All important events remained constant. There were, of course, some effects which the prediction did not cover. They include an oil-well explosion in Patagonia, a flu epidemic in Kansas and an increase in smog over Mexico City.”

  “Have all injured parties been compensated?” Lan II wanted to know.

  “They have. And the colonization of Antartica is already begun.”

  The Chief Programmer unfolded the paper tape he had taken from the Probabilities Calculator.

  “But now we face a dilemma. As predicted, the Historic Main Line leads into unpleasant complications. But there are no good alternate lines to switch into!”

  The Members murmured to each other.

  James said, “Let me explain the situation.” He walked to a wall and pulled down a large chart. “The crisis-point occurs on April 12, 1959, and our problem centers around an individual named Ben Baxter. The circumstances are as follows . . .”

  EVENTS, by their very nature, evoke alternate possibilities, each of which produces its own continuum of history. In other spatial-temporal worlds, Spain lost at Lepanto, Normandy at Hastings, England at Waterloo.

  Suppose Spain had lost at Lepanto . . .

  Spain did, disastrously. And Turkish sea power, invincible, swept the Mediterranean of European shipping. Ten years later, a Turkish fleet conquered Naples and paved the way for the Moorish invasion of Austria . . .

  In another time and space, that is.

  This speculation became observable fact after the development of temporal selection and displacement. By 2103, Oswald Meyner and his associates were able to show the theoretical possibility of Switching from the Historic Main Line—so named for convenience—to alternate lines. Within definite limits, however.

  It would be impossible, for example, to Switch into a past where William of Normandy lost the battle of Hastings. The
world developing from that event would be too different, alien in every way. Switching was found possible only into closely adjacent lines.

  The theoretical possibility became a practical necessity in 2213. In that year, the Sykes-Raborn Calculator at Harvard predicted the complete sterilization of Earth’s atmosphere by the accretion of radioactive by-products. The process was irreversible and inevitable. It could be stopped only in the past, where the poisoning had begun.

  The first Switch was made with the newly developed Adams-Holt-Maartens Selector. The World Planning Council chose a line which involved the early death of Vassily Ouchenko (and the obliteration of his erroneous radiation-damage theories). A large part of the subsequent poisoning was avoided, although at the cost of seventy-three lives—descendants of Ouchenko for whom no Switch-parents could be found.

  After that, there was no turning back. Line Switching became as necessary to the world as disease prevention.

  But the process had its limitations. A time had to come when no available line would be usable, when all futures looked unfavorable.

  When that happened, the Planning Council was prepared to use more direct means.

  AND those are the consequences for us,” Edwin James concluded. “That is the outcome if we allow the Main Historic Line to continue.”

  Lan II said, “Meaning that you predict serious trouble for Earth, Mr. Programmer.”

  “With regret, I do.”

  The Programmer poured himself a glass of water and turned a page in his notebook.

  “Our pivotal point is Ben Baxter, who dies on April 12, 1957. He must live at least another ten years for his work to have the desired effect upon world events. In that time, Ben Baxter will purchase Yellowstone National Park from the government. He will continue to maintain it as a park, but will farm the trees. This enterprise will be highly successful. He will buy other great tracts of land in North and South America. The Baxter heirs will be lumber kings for the next two hundred years and will own huge standings throughout the world. Due to their efforts, there will be great forests in the world, up to and including our own time. But if Baxter dies—”

  James gestured wearily. “With Baxter dead, the forests will be cut before the governments of the world are fully aware of the consequences. Then comes the great blight of ’03, which the few remaining woodlands cannot withstand. And at last the present, with the natural carbon-dioxide-oxygen cycle disrupted by the destruction of the trees, with all combustion devices banned, with oxygen inhalers a necessity merely to survive.”

  “We’ve started the forests again,” Aaui said.

  “It will be hundreds of years before they have grown to any significant size, even with forced growing methods. In the meantime, the balance may become further upset. That is the importance of Ben Baxter to us. He holds the key to the air we breathe!”

  “Very well,” said Dr. Sveg. “The Main Line, in which Baxter dies, is clearly unusable. But there are Alternates—”

  “Many,” James said. “As usual, most of them cannot be selected. Counting the Main Line, we have a total of three choices. But, unfortunately, each of them results in the death of Ben Baxter on April 12, 1959.”

  The Programmer wiped his forehead. “To be more specific, Ben Baxter dies on the afternoon of April 12, 1959, as a result of a business meeting with a man named Ned Brynne.”

  The new member, Roger Beatty, cleared his throat nervously.

  “This event takes place in all three probability worlds?”

  “Yes. In every one of them, Brynne is the cause of Baxter’s death.”

  Dr. Sveg came ponderously to his feet. “Formerly, this Council has avoided any direct interference with the existing lines of probability. But this situation seems to call for interference.”

  The council members nodded their agreement.

  “Let’s get down to cases,” said Aaui. “For the good of Earth, can this Ned Brynne be Switched Out?”

  “No,” replied the Programmer. “Brynne himself plays a vital role in our future. He has an option on almost a hundred square miles of forest. He needs Baxter’s backing to purchase it. If Brynne could be kept from that meeting with Baxter—”

  “How?” asked Beatty.

  “Take your pick,” James suggested. “Threats, persuasion, bribery, kidnaping—any means short of murder. We have three worlds to work in. If we can restrain Brynne in just one of them, our problem is solved.”

  “What would be our best method?” asked Aaui.

  “Try several, a different one in each probability world,” said Miss Chandragore. “Our chances would be best that way. Shall we go ourselves?”

  “We are best suited for the job,” Edwin James said. “We know the factors involved. And politics gives one a certain skill in improvising—which will be sorely needed in this job. Each team will be absolutely on its own. There is no way for them to check on each other’s progress across the time lines.”

  “Each team then,” Dr. Sveg summed up, “will have to assume that the other teams fail.”

  “Probably with good reason,” James said wryly. “Let’s organize the teams and select our methods.”

  I

  ON THE morning of April 12, 1959, Ned Brynne awakened and washed and dressed. At 1:30 that afternoon, he had an appointment with Ben Baxter, president of Baxter Industries. Brynne’s entire future hinged upon the outcome of that meeting. If he could get the backing of the gigantic Baxter enterprises, and do so on favorable terms . . .

  Brynne was a tall, darkly handsome man of thirty-six. There was a hint of fanatic pride in his carefully bland eyes, a suggestion of unreasoning stubbornness in his tightly held mouth. His movements had the controlled strength of a man who is constantly watching and judging himself.

  He was almost ready to leave.

  He tucked a swagger stick under his arm and slipped a copy of Somerset’s American Peerage into his jacket pocket. He was never without that infallible guide.

  Finally he fixed to his lapel the golden sunburst decoration of his station. Brynne was a Chamberlain, second class, and properly proud of the fact. Some people thought him too young for so exalted a position. But they had to agree that Brynne carried the prerogatives and requirements of his office with a dignity quite beyond his years.

  He locked his apartment and walked to the elevator. There was a small crowd waiting, mostly commoners, but two Equerries as well. All made way for him when the elevator came.

  “Pleasant day, Chamberlain Brynne,” the operator said as the car started down.

  Brynne inclined his head an inch in the usual response to a commoner. He was deep in thought about Ben Baxter. But at the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the occupants of the car, a tall, strongly built fellow with golden-brown Polynesian features and tilted dark eyes. Brynne wondered what a man like that was doing in his apartment building. He knew the other tenants by sight, although their lower status naturally made them unworthy of his recognition.

  The elevator reached the lobby and Brynne forgot about the Polynesian fellow. He had a lot on his mind today. There were some problems connected with Ben Baxter, problems he hoped to resolve before the meeting. He strode outside, into a dismal gray April morning, and decided to go to the Prince Charles Coffee Shop for a late breakfast.

  It was 10:25 A.M.

  “WHAT do you think?” Aaui asked.

  “Looks like a tough customer,” said Roger Beatty. He inhaled deeply, savoring the rich air. It was a delightful luxury, breathing all the oxygen he wanted. In his time even the very wealthy turned down the oxygen tanks at night.

  They were following half a block behind Brynne. There was no losing Brynne’s tall, swaggering figure, even in New York’s morning rush.

  “He looked at you in the elevator,” Beatty said.

  “I know.” Aaui grinned. “Give him something to worry about.”

  “He doesn’t look like a worrying type,” Beatty said. “I wish we had more time.”

  Aaui shrugg
ed. “This was the closest we could come to the event. Our next choice would have been eleven years ago. And we would still have to wait until now before taking direct action.”

  “At least we’d know something about Brynne. He doesn’t look as though he’ll frighten easily.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Aaui admitted. “But that’s the course of action we selected.”

  They continued to follow, noticing how the crowds parted to make way for Brynne, who marched straight ahead, not looking to right or left. Then it happened.

  Brynne, his attention turned inward, collided with a portly, florid-faced man, who wore in his lapel the dazzling purple and silver medallion of a First Order Crusader.

  “Can’t you watch where you’re going, imbecile?” the Crusader barked.

  BRYNNE noticed the man’s rank, swallowed and muttered, “I beg your pardon, sir.” The Crusader wasn’t so easily placated. “Do you make a habit of bumping into your betters, sirrah?”

  “I do not,” Brynne said, his face growing red, fighting hard to restrain his rage. A crowd of commoners had gathered to watch. They ringed the brilliantly dressed men, grinning and nudging each other.

  “Then suppose you watch yourself!” the portly Crusader roared. “Stop cluttering the streets like a sleepwalker, before you are taught a lesson in manners!”

  Brynne said, with deadly quiet, “Sir, if you feel the necessity of giving me such a lesson, I should be pleased to meet you at a place of your choosing, with such weapons as you elect—”

  “Me? Meet you?” the Crusader asked incredulously.

  “My rank permits it, sir.”

  “Your rank? You’re a good five degrees beneath me, you simple idiot! Enough of this or I’ll send my servants—who outrank you—to teach you a lesson in manners. I’ll remember your face, young man. Now get out of my way!”

  And with that, the Crusader pushed past him and stalked away.

  “Coward!” said Brynne, his face a mottled red. But he said it softly, and the commoners noticed. Brynne turned to them, his hands tightening on his swagger stick. Grinning cheerfully, the crowd broke up.