Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

He scrambled into the thorn bush on all fours. The bird circled, shrilling, trying to find a way in. Piersen moved deeper into the thicket toward safety.

  Then he heard a low moan beside him.

  He had waited too long. The jungle had marked him for death and would never let him go. Beside him was a long, blue-black, shark-shaped creature, slightly smaller than the first he had encountered, creeping quickly and easily toward him through the thorn thicket.

  Caught between a shrieking death in the air and a moaning death on the ground, Piersen came to his feet. He shouted his fear, anger, and defiance. And without hesitation, he flung himself at the blue-black beast.

  The great jaws slashed. Piersen lay motionless. With his last vestige of consciousness, he saw the jaw widen for the death stroke.

  Can it be real, Piersen wondered, in sudden fear, just before he blanked out.

  WHEN he recovered consciousness, he was lying on a white cot, in a white, softly lighted room. Slowly his head cleared and he remembered—his death.

  Quite an adventure, he thought. Must tell the boys. But first a drink. Maybe ten drinks and a little entertainment.

  He turned his head. A girl in white, who had been sitting in a chair beside his bed, rose and bent over him.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Piersen?” she asked.

  “Fair,” Piersen said. “Where’s Jones?”

  “Jones?”

  “Srinagar Jones. He runs this place.”

  “You must be mistaken, sir,” the girl told him. “Dr. Baintree runs our colony.”

  “Your what?” Piersen shouted.

  A man came into the room. “That will be all, Nurse,” he said. He turned to Piersen. “Welcome to Venus, Mr. Piersen. I’m Dr. Baintree, Director of Camp Five.”

  Piersen stared unbelievingly at the tall, bearded man. He struggled out of bed and would have fallen if Baintree hadn’t steadied him.

  He was amazed to find most of his body wrapped in bandages.

  “It was real?” he asked.

  Baintree helped him to the window. Piersen looked out on cleared land, fences, and the distant green edge of the jungle.

  “One out of ten thousand!” Piersen said bitterly. “Of all the damned luck! I could have been killed!”

  “You nearly were,” said Baintree. “But your coming here wasn’t a matter of luck or statistics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Piersen, let me put it this way. Life is easy on Earth. The problems of human existence have been solved—but solved, I fear, to the detriment of the race. Earth stagnates. The birth rate continues to fall, the suicide rate goes up. New frontiers are opening in space, but hardly anyone is interested in going to them. Still, the frontiers must be manned, if the race is to survive.”

  “I have heard that exact speech,” Piersen said, “in the newsreels, on the solido, in the papers—”

  “It didn’t seem to impress you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true,” Baintree assured him, “whether you believe it or not.”

  “YOUR’RE a fanatic,” Piersen said. “I’m not going to argue with you. Suppose it is true—where do I fit in?”

  “We are desperately undermanned,” said Baintree. “We’ve offered every inducement, tried every possible method of recruitment. But no one wants to leave Earth.”

  “Naturally. So?”

  “This is the only method that works. Adventures Unlimited is run by us. Likely candidates are transported here and left in the jungle. We watch to see how they make out. It provides an excellent testing ground—for the individual as well as for us.”

  “What would have happened,” Piersen asked, “if I hadn’t fought back against the shrubs?”

  Baintree shrugged his shoulders.

  “And so you recruited me,” Piersen said. “You ran me through your obstacle course, and I fought like a good little man, and you saved me just in the nick of time. Now I’m supposed to be flattered that you picked me, huh? Now I’m supposed to suddenly realize I’m a rough, tough outdoor man? Now I’m supposed to be filled with a courageous, farsighted pioneering spirit?”

  Baintree watched him steadily.

  “And now I’m supposed to sign up as a pioneer? Baintree, you must think I’m nuts or something. Do you honestly think I’m going to give up a very pleasant existence on Earth so I can grub around on a farm or hack through a jungle on Venus? To hell with you, Baintree, and to hell with your whole salvation program.”

  “I quite understand how you feel,” Baintree answered. “Our methods are somewhat arbitrary, but the situation requires it. When you’ve calmed down—”

  “I’m perfectly calm now!” Piersen screamed. “Don’t give me any more sermons about saving the world! I want to go home to a nice comfortable pleasure palace.”

  “You can leave on this evening’s flight,” Baintree said.

  “What? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Piersen. “Are you trying psychology on me? It won’t work—I’m going home. I don’t see why any of your kidnap victims stay here.”

  “They don’t,” Baintree said.

  “What?”

  “Occasionally, one decides to stay. But for the most part, they react like you. They do not discover a sudden deep love for the soil, an overwhelming urge to conquer a new planet. That’s storybook stuff. They want to go home. But they often agree to help us on Earth.”

  “How?”

  “By becoming recruiters,” Baintree said. “It’s fun, really. You eat and drink and enjoy yourself, the same as ever. And when you find a likely looking candidate, you talk him into taking a dream adventure with Adventures Unlimited—exactly as Benz did with you.”

  PIERSEN looked startled. “Benz? That worthless bum is a recruiter?”

  “Certainly. Did you think recruiters were starry-eyed idealists? They’re people like you, Piersen, who enjoy having a good time, enjoy being on the inside of things, and perhaps even enjoy doing some good for the human race, as long as it’s no trouble to them. I think you’d like the work.”

  “I might try it for a while,” Piersen said. “For a kick.”

  “That’s all we ask,” said Baintree.

  “But how do you get new colonists?”

  “Well, that’s a funny thing. After a few years, many of our recruiters get curious about what’s happening here. And they return.”

  “Well,” Piersen said, “I’ll try this recruiting kick for a while. But only for a while, as long as I feel like it.”

  “Of course,” said Baintree. “Come, you’d better get packed.”

  “And don’t count on me coming back. I’m a city boy. I like my comfort. The salvation racket is strictly for the eager types.”

  “Of course. By the way, you did very well in the jungle.”

  “I did?”

  Baintree nodded gravely.

  Piersen stayed at the window, staring at the fields, the buildings, the fences, and the distant edge of the jungle which he had fought and nearly overcome.

  “We’d better leave,” said Baintree.

  “Eh? All right, I’m coming,” Piersen said.

  He turned slowly from the window with a faint trace of irritation that he tried to and couldn’t identify.

  GRAY FLANNEL ARMOR

  Would knights have been still more bold in days of old . . . if they’d had transistor amulets?

  THE means which Thomas Hanley selected to meet the girl who later became his wife is worthy of note, particularly by anthropologists, sociologists and students of the bizarre. It serves, in its humble way, as an example of one of the more obscure mating customs of the late 20th century. And since this custom had an impact upon modern American industry, Hanley’s story has considerable importance.

  Thomas Hanley was a tall, slim young man, conservative in his tastes, moderate in his vices, and modest to a fault. His conversation with either sex was perfectly proper, even to
the point of employing the verbal improprieties suitable to his age and station. He owned several gray flannel suits and many slim neckties with regimental stripes. You might think you could pick him out of a crowd because of his horn-rimmed glasses, but you would be wrong. That wasn’t Hanley. Hanley was the other one.

  Who would believe that, beneath this meek, self-effacing, industrious, conforming exterior beat a wildly romantic heart? Sadly enough, anyone would, for the disguise fooled only the disguised.

  Young men like Hanley, in their gray flannel armor and hornrimmed visors, are today’s knights of chivalry. Millions of them roam the streets of our great cities, their footsteps firm and hurried, eyes front, voices lowered, dressed to the point of invisibility. Like actors or bewitched men, they live their somber lives.

  While within them the flame of romance burns and will not die.

  Hanley daydreamed continually and predictably of the swish and thud of swinging cutlasses, of great ships driving toward the sun under a press of sail, of a maiden’s eyes, dark and infinitely sad, peering at him from behind a gossamer veil. And, predictably still, he dreamed of more modern forms of romance.

  But romance is a commodity difficult to come by in the great cities. This fact was recognized only recently by our more enterprising businessmen. And one night, Hanley received a visit from an unusual sort of salesman.

  HANLEY had returned to his one-room apartment after a harried Friday at the office. He loosened his tie and contemplated, with a certain melancholy, the long weekend ahead. He didn’t want to watch the boxing on television and he had seen all the neighborhood movies. Worst of all, the girls he knew were uninteresting and his chances for meeting others were practically nil.

  He sat in his armchair as the deep blue twilight spread over Manhattan, and speculated on where he might find an interesting girl, and what he would say if he found one, and—

  His doorbell rang.

  As a rule, only peddlers or solicitors for the Firemen’s Fund called on him unannounced. But tonight he could welcome even the momentary pleasure of turning down a peddler. So he opened the door and saw a short, dapper, flashily dressed little man beaming at him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hanley,” the little man said briskly. “I’m Joe Morris, a representative of the New York Romance Service, with its main office in the Empire State Building and branches in all the boroughs, Westchester and New Jersey. We’re out to serve lonely people, Mr. Hanley, and that means you. Don’t deny it! Why else would you be sitting home on a Friday night? You’re lonely and it’s our business and our pleasure to serve you. A bright, sensitive, good-looking young fellow like yourself needs girls, nice girls, pleasant, pretty, understanding girls—”

  “Hold on,” Hanley said sternly. “If you run some sort of a fancy call girl bureau—”

  He stopped, for Joe Morris had turned livid. The salesman’s throat swelled with anger and he turned and started to leave.

  “Wait!” said Hanley. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll have you know, sir, I’m a family man,” Joe Morris said stiffly. “I have a wife and three children in the Bronx. If you think for a minute I’d associate myself with anything underhanded—”

  “I’m really sorry.” Hanley ushered Morris in and gave him the armchair.

  Mr. Morris immediately regained his brisk and jovial manner.

  “No, Mr. Hanley,” he said, “the young ladies I refer to are not—ah—professionals. They are sweet, normal, romantically inclined young girls. But they are lonely. There are many lonely girls in our city, Mr. Hanley.”

  SOMEHOW, Hanley had thought the condition applied only to men. “Are there?” he asked.

  “There are. The purpose of the New York Romance Service,” said Morris, “is to bring young people together under suitable circumstances.”

  “Hmm,” Hanley said. “I take it then you run a sort of—if you’ll pardon the expression—a sort of Friendship Club?”

  “Not at all! Nothing like it! My dear Mr. Hanley, have you ever attended a Friendship Club?”

  Hanley shook his head.

  “You should, sir,” said Morris. “Then you could really appreciate our Service. Friendship Clubs! Picture, if you will, a barren hall, one flight up in the cheaper Broadway area. At one end, five musicians in frayed tuxedos play, with a dreary lack of enthusiasm, the jittery songs of the day. Their thin music echoes disconsolately through the hall and blends with the screech of traffic outside. There is a row of chairs on either side of the hall, men on one side, women on the other. All are acutely embarrassed by their presence there.

  “They cling to a wretched nonchalance, nervously chain-smoking cigarettes and stamping out the butts on the floor. From time to time, some unfortunate gets up his courage to ask for a dance and, stiffly, he moves his partner around the floor, under the lewd and cynical eyes of the rest. The master of ceremonies, an over-stuffed idiot with a fixed and ghastly smile, hurries around, trying to inject some life into the corpse of the evening. But to no avail.”

  Morris paused for breath. “That is the anachronism known as the Friendship Club—a strained, nervous, distasteful institution better suited to Victorian times than to our own. At the New York Romance Service, we have done what should have been done years ago. We have applied scientific precision and technological know-how to a thorough study of the factors essential to a successful meeting between the sexes.”

  “What are those factors?” Hanley inquired.

  “The most vital ones,” said Morris, “are spontaneity and a sense of fatedness.”

  “Spontaneity and fate seem to be contradictory terms,” Hanley pointed out.

  “Of course. Romance, by its very nature, must be composed of contradictory elements. We have graphs to prove it.”

  “Then you sell romance?” Hanley asked dubiously.

  “The very article! The pure and pristine substance itself! Not sex, which is available to everyone. Not love—no way of guaranteeing permanency and therefore commercially impracticable. We sell romance, Mr. Hanley, the missing ingredient in modern society, the spice of life, the vision of all the ages!”

  “That’s very interesting,” Hanley said. But he questioned the validity of Morris’s claims. The man might be a charlatan or he might be a visionary. Whatever he was, Hanley doubted whether he could sell romance. Not the real thing. Not the dark and fitful visions which haunted Hanley’s days and nights.

  HE stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Morris. I’ll think over what you’ve said. Right now, I’m in rather a rush, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “But, sir! Surely you can’t afford to pass up romance!”

  “Sorry, but—”

  “Try our system for a few days, absolutely free of charge,” Mr. Morris said. “Here, put this in your lapel.” He handed Hanley something that looked like a small transistor radio with a tiny video eye.

  “What’s this?” Hanley asked.

  “A small transistor radio with a tiny video eye.”

  “What does it do?”

  “You’ll see. Just give it a try. We’re the country’s biggest firm specializing in romance, Mr. Hanley. We aim to stay that way by continuing to fill the needs of millions of sensitive young American men and women. Remember—romances sponsored by our firm are fated, spontaneous, esthetically satisfying, physically delightful and morally justifiable.”

  And with that, Joe Morris shook Hanley’s hand and left.

  Hanley turned the tiny transistor radio in his hand. It had no buttons or dials. He fastened it to the lapel of his jacket. Nothing happened.

  He shrugged his shoulders, tightened his tie and went out for a walk.

  It was a clear, cool night. Like most nights in Hanley’s life, it was a perfect time for romance. Around him lay the city, infinite in its possibilities and rich in promise. But the city was devoid of fulfillment. He had walked these streets a thousand nights, with firm step, eyes front, ready for anything. And nothing had ever happened.

  He passe
d apartment buildings and thought of the women behind the high, blank windows, looking down, seeing a lonely walker on the dark streets and wondering about him, thinking . . .

  “Nice to be on the roof of a building,” a voice said. “To look down on the city.”

  Hanley stopped short and whirled around. He was completely alone. It took him a moment to realize that the voice had come from the tiny transistor radio.

  “What?” Hanley asked.

  The radio was silent.

  Look down on the city, Hanley mused. The radio was suggesting he look down on the city. Yes, he thought, it would be nice.

  “Why not?” Hanley asked himself, and turned toward a building.

  “Not that one,” the radio whispered.

  Hanley obediently passed by the building and stopped in front of the next.

  “This one?” he queried.

  The radio didn’t answer. But Hanley caught the barest hint of an approving little grunt.

  Well, he thought, you had to hand it to the Romance Service. They seemed to know what they were doing. His movements were as nearly spontaneous as any guided movements could be.

  ENTERING the building, Hanley stepped into the self-service elevator and punched for the top floor. From there, he climbed a short flight of stairs to the roof. Once outside, he began walking toward the west side of the building.

  “Other side,” whispered the radio.

  Hanley turned and walked to the other side. There he looked out over the city, at the orderly rows of street lights, white and faintly haloed. Dotted here and there were the reds and greens of traffic lights, and the occasional colored blotch of an electric sign. His city stretched before him, infinite in its possibilities, rich in promise, devoid of fulfillment.

  Suddenly he became aware of another person on the roof, staring raptly at the spectacle of lights.

  “Excuse me,” said Hanley. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You didn’t,” the person said, and Hanley realized he was talking to a woman.

  We are strangers, Hanley thought. A man and a woman who meet by accident—or fate—on a dark rooftop overlooking the city. He wondered how many dreams the Romance Service had analyzed, how many visions they had tabulated, to produce something as perfect as this.