Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “WHERE can I find Dan?” Crompton asked.

  “Ah,” said the old man, blinking his watery eyes, “didn’t you know Dan left here? Three years ago, it was.”

  “East Marsh was too dull for him,” the old lady said, with a touch of venom. “So he borrowed our little nest egg and left in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping.”

  “Didn’t want to bother us,” the old man quickly explained. “Wanted to seek his fortune, Dan did. And I wouldn’t be surprised but what he found it. Had the stuff of a real man, Dan did.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Couldn’t rightly say,” the old man said. “He never wrote us. Never much of a hand with words, Dan. But Billy Davis saw him in Ou-Barkar that time he drove his semi there with a load of potatoes.”

  “When was that?”

  “Maybe two years ago,” the old lady said. “That’s the last we ever heard of Dan. Venus is a big place, mister.”

  Crompton thanked the old couple. He tried to locate Billy Davis for further information, but found that he was working as third mate of a pocket freighter. The ship had sailed a month ago and was making stops at all the nasty little ports on the Southern Inland Zee.

  “Well,” Crompton said, “there’s only one thing to do. We’ll have to go to Ou-Barkar.”

  “I suppose so,” Loomis said. “But frankly, old man, I’m beginning to wonder about this Stack fellow.”

  “I am too,” Crompton admitted. “But he’s part of us and we need him in the reintegration.”

  “I guess we do,” Loomis said. “Lead on, oh, Elder Brother.”

  Crompton led on. He caught a helicopter to Depotsville and a bus to St. Denis. Here he was able to hitch a ride in a semi bound across the marshes to Ou-Barkar with a load of insecticides. The driver was glad of company across the desolate Wetlands.

  During that fourteen-hour trip, Crompton learned much about Venus.

  To this raw new planet came the pioneering types, spiritual and sometimes actual descendants of the American frontiersmen, Boer farmers, Israeli kibbutzniks and Australian ranchers. Whole men and Splitters fought side by side for a foothold on the fertile steppes, the ore-rich mountains, and by the shores of the warm seas.

  They fought with the Stone Age aboriginals, the lizard-evolved Ais. Their great victories at Satan’s Pass, Squareface, Albertsville and Double Tongue, and their defeats at Slow River and Blue Falls were already a part of human history, fit to stand beside Chancellorsville, the Little Big Horn, and Dienbienphu.

  And the wars were not over yet. On Venus, the driver told them, a world was still to be won.

  Crompton listened, thought he might like to be a part of all this. Loomis was frankly bored by the whole matter and disgusted with the rank swamp odors.

  OU-BARKAR was a cluster of plantations deep in the interior of White Cloud Continent. Twenty Whole men supervised the work of five hundred Splitters and two thousand aboriginals, who planted, tended and harvested the li-trees that grew only in that sector. The li fruit, gathered twice a year, was the basis of elispice, a condiment now considered indispensable in Terran cooking.

  Crompton met the foreman, a huge, red-faced man named Haaris, who wore a revolver on his hip and a blacksnake whip coiled neatly around his waist. “Dan Stack?” the foreman said.

  “Sure, Stack worked here. He left with a boot in the rear to help him on his way.”

  “Do you mind telling me why?” Crompton asked.

  “Don’t mind at all,” the foreman said. “But let’s do it over a drink.”

  He led Crompton to Ou-Barkar’s single saloon. There, over a glass of local cactus whiskey, Haaris talked about Dan Stack.

  “He came up here from East Marsh. I believe he’d had some trouble with a girl down there—kicked in her teeth or something. But that’s no concern of mine. Most of us here are Splitters, and we aren’t exactly gentle types. I guess the cities are damned well rid of us. I put Stack to work overseeing fifty Ais on a hundred-acre li field. He did damned well at first.”

  The foreman downed his drink. Crompton ordered another and paid for it.

  “I told him,” Haaris said, “that he’d have to drive his boys to get anything out of them. We use mostly Chipetzi tribesmen, and they’re a sullen, treacherous bunch, though husky. Their chief rents us workers on a twenty-year contract, in exchange for guns. Then they try to pick us off with the guns, but that’s another matter. We handle one thing at a time.”

  “A twenty-year contract?” Crompton echoed. “Then the Ais are practically slave laborers?”

  “Right,” the foreman said decisively. “Some of the owners try to pretty it up, call it temporary indenture or feudal-transition economy. But it’s slavery, and why not call it that? It’s the only way we’ll ever civilize these creatures. Stack understood that. Big hefty fellow he was, and handy with a whip. I thought he’d do all right.”

  CROMPTON ordered another drink for the foreman. “And?” he prompted.

  “At first he was fine,” Haaris said. “Laid on with the black-snake, got out his quota and then some. But he hadn’t any sense of moderation. Started killing his natives with the whip, and replacements cost money. I told him to take it a little easier. He didn’t. One day his Chipetzis ganged up on him and he had to gun down about eight before they backed off. I had a heart-to-heart talk with him. Told him the idea was to get work out, not kill Ais. We expect to lose a certain percentage, of course. But Stack was pushing it too far and cutting down the profit.”

  The foreman spat and lighted a cigarette. “Stack just liked using that whip too much. Lots of the id-boys do, but Stack had no sense of moderation. His Chipetzis ganged up again and he had to kill about a dozen of them. But he lost a hand in the fight. His whip hand. I think a Chipetzi chewed it off.

  “I put him to work in the drying sheds, but he got into another fight and killed four Ais. Well, that was just too much. Those workers cost money and we can’t have some hot-headed idiot killing them off every time he gets sore. I gave Stack his pay and told him to get the hell out.”

  “Did he say where he was going?” Crompton asked.

  “He said we didn’t realize that the Ais had to be wiped out to make room for Terrans. Said he was going to join the Vigilantes. They’re a sort of roving army that keeps the unpacified tribes in check.”

  Crompton thanked the foreman and inquired for the location of the Vigilantes’ headquarters.

  “Right now they’re encamped on the left bank of the Rainmaker River,” Haaris said. “They’re trying to make terms with the Seriid. You want to find Stack pretty bad, huh?”

  “I have to find him,” Crompton said.

  Haaris looked at the briefcase in Crompton’s hand and shrugged fatalistically. “It’s a long trek to Rainmaker River. I can sell you pack mules and provisions, and I’ll rent you a native youngster for a guide. You’ll be going through pacified territory, so you should reach the Vigilantes all right. I think the territory’s still pacified.”

  LOOMIS, that night, urged Crompton to abandon the search. Stack was obviously a thief and murderer. What was the sense of taking him into the combination?

  Crompton felt that the case wasn’t as simple as that. For one thing, the stories about Stack might have been exaggerated. But even if they were true, it simply meant that Stack was an inadequate monolithic personality extended past all normal bounds, as were Crompton and Loomis. Within the combination, in fusion, the id would be modified. Stack would supply the necessary measure of aggression, the toughness and survival fitness that both Crompton and Loomis lacked.

  Loomis didn’t think so, but agreed to suspend judgment until they actually met their missing component.

  In the morning, Crompton purchased equipment and mules at an exorbitant price, and the following day he set out at dawn, led by a Chipetzi youngster named Rekki.

  Crompton jogged after the guide through virgin forest into the Thompson Mountains, up razorback ridges, across cloud-covered
peaks into narrow granite passes where the wind screamed like the tormented dead, then down into the dense and steamy jungle on the other side.

  Loomis, appalled by the hardships of the march, retreated into a corner of the mind and emerged only in the evenings when the campfire was lit and the hammock slung.

  Crompton, with set jaw and bloodshot eyes, stumbled through the burning days, bearing the full sensory impact of the journey and wondering how long his strength would last.

  On the eighteenth day, they reached the banks of a shallow muddy stream. This, Rekki said, was the Rainmaker River. Two miles farther on, they found the Vigilante camp.

  The Vigilante commander, Colonel Prentice, was a tall, spare, gray-eyed man who showed the marks of a recent wasting fever. He remembered Stack very well.

  “Yes, he was with us for a while. I was uncertain about accepting him. His reputation, for one thing. And a one-handed man . . . But he’d trained his left hand to fire a gun better than most do with their right, and he had a bronze fitting over his right stump. Made it himself and it was grooved to hold a machete. No lack of guts, I’ll tell you that. But I had to cashier him.”

  “Why?” Crompton asked.

  THE commander sighed unhappily. “Contrary to popular belief, we Vigilantes are not a free-booting army of conquest. We are not here to decimate and destroy the natives. Nor are we here to annex new territories upon the slightest pretext. We are here to enforce treaties entered into in good faith by Ais and settlers, to prevent raiding by Ais and Terrans alike, and, in general, to keep the peace. Stack had difficulty getting that through his thick skull.”

  Some expression must have passed across Crompton’s face, for the commander nodded sympathetically.

  “You know what a really rampant id is like, eh? Then you can imagine what happened. I didn’t want to lose him. He was a tough and able soldier, skilled in forest and mountain lore, perfectly at home in the jungle. The Border Patrol is thinly spread and we need every man we can get, Whole or Split. Stack was valuable. I told the sergeants to keep him in line and allow no brutalizing of the natives. For a while, it worked. Stack was trying hard. He was learning our rules, our code, our way of doing things. His record was unimpeachable. Then came the Shadow Peak incident, which I suppose you’ve heard about.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t,” Crompton said.

  “Really? I thought everyone on Venus had. Well, the situation was this. Stack’s patrol had rounded up nearly a hundred Ais of an outlaw tribe that had been causing us some trouble. They were being conducted to the special reservation at Shadow Peak. On the march, there was a little trouble, a scuffle. One of the Ais had a knife and he slashed Stack across the right wrist.

  “I suppose losing one hand made Stack especially sensitive to the possible loss of another. The wound was superficial, but he berserked. He killed the native with a riot gun, then turned it on the rest of them. A lieutenant had to bludgeon him into unconsciousness before he could be stopped. The damage to Terran-Ais relations was immeasurable. I couldn’t have a man like that in my outfit, so, as I said, I cashiered him.”

  “Where is he now?” asked Crompton.

  “I heard he drifted to Port New Haarlem and worked for a while on the docks. He teamed up with a chap named Barton Finch. Both were jailed for drunk and disorderly conduct, got out and drifted back to the White Cloud frontier. Now he and Finch own a little trading store up near Blood Delta.”

  Crompton rubbed his forehead wearily and said, “How do I get there?”

  “By canoe,” the commander said. “You go down the Rainmaker River to where it forks. The left-hand stream is Blood River. It’s navigable all the way to Blood Delta. But I would not advise the trip. For one thing, it’s extremely hazardous. For another, it would be useless. You want to reintegrate him? Don’t try. He’s a bred-in-the-bone killer. He’s better off alone on the frontier, where he can’t do much damage.”

  “I must reintegrate,” Crompton said, his throat suddenly dry.

  “There’s no law against it,” said the commander, with the air of a man who has done his duty.

  CROMPTON found that Blood Delta was Man’s farthest frontier on Venus. It lay in the midst of hostile Grel and Tengtzi tribesmen, with whom a precarious peace was maintained, and an incessant guerrilla war was ignored.

  There was great wealth to be gained in the Delta country. The natives brought in fist-sized diamonds and rubies, sacks of the rarest spices, and an occasional flute or carving from the lost city of Alteirne. They traded these things for guns and ammunition, which they used enthusiastically on the traders and on each other. There was wealth to be found in the Delta, and sudden death, and slow, painful, lingering death as well. The Blood River, which wound slowly into the heart of the Delta country, had its own special hazards, which usually took a fifty per cent toll of travelers upon it.

  Crompton resolutely shut his mind to all common sense. His component, Stack, lay just ahead of him. The end was in sight and Crompton was determined to reach it. So he bought a canoe and hired four native paddlers, purchased supplies, guns, ammunition, and arranged for a dawn departure.

  But the night before he planned to go, Loomis revolted.

  They were in a small tent which the commander had put aside for Crompton’s use. By a smoking kerosene lamp, Crompton was stuffing cartridges into a bandolier, his attention fixed on the immediate task and unwilling to look elsewhere.

  Loomis said, “Now listen to me. I’ve recognized you as the dominant personality. I’ve made no attempt to take over the body. I’ve been in good spirits and I’ve kept you in good spirits while we tramped halfway around Venus. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, it is,” Crompton said, reluctantly putting down the bandolier.

  “I’ve done the best I could, but this isn’t fun any longer. I want reintegration, but not with a homicidal maniac. Don’t talk to me about monolithic personalities. Stack’s homicidal and I want nothing to do with him.”

  “He’s a part of us,” said Crompton.

  LOOMIS said, “Just listen to yourself, Crompton! You’re supposed to be the component most in touch with reality. And you’re completely obsessed, planning on sending us into sure death.”

  “We’ll get through all right,” Crompton said, with more certainty than he felt.

  “Will we?” Loomis asked. “Have you listened to the stories about Blood River? And even if we do make it, what will we find at the Delta? A homicidal maniac! He’ll shatter us, Crompton!”

  Crompton was unable to find an adequate answer. As their search had progressed, he had grown more and more horrified at the unfolding personality of Stack, and more and more obsessed with the need to find him. Loomis had never lived with the driving need for reintegration; he had come in because of external problems, not internal needs. But Crompton had been compelled by the passion for humanness, completion, roundedness. Without Stack, fusion was impossible. With him, there was a chance.

  “We’re going on,” Crompton said.

  “Alistair, please! You and I get along all right. We can do fine without Stack. Let’s go back to Mars or Earth.”

  Crompton shook his head. He had already felt the deep and irreconcilable rifts occurring between him and Loomis. He could sense the time when those rifts would extend to all areas, and, without reintegration, they would have to go their separate ways—in one body.

  Which would be madness.

  “You won’t go back?” Loomis persisted.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m taking over!”

  Loomis’ personality surged in a surprise attack and seized partial control of the body’s motor functions. Crompton was stunned for a moment. Then, as he felt control slipping away from him, he grimly closed with Loomis, and the battle was begun.

  It was a silent war, fought by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp that grew gradually dimmer toward dawn. The battleground was the Crompton mind. The prize was the Crompton body, which lay shivering on a canvas cot,
perspiration pouring from its forehead, eyes staring blankly at the light, a nerve in its forehead twitching steadily.

  Crompton was the dominant personality, but he was weakened by conflict and guilt, and hampered by his own scruples. Loomis, weaker but single-minded, certain of his course, totally committed to the struggle, managed to hold the vital motor functions and block the flow of antidols.

  FOR hours, the two personalities were locked in combat, while the feverish Crompton body moaned and writhed on the cot. At last, in the gray hours of the morning, Loomis began to gain ground. Crompton gathered himself for a final effort, but couldn’t bring himself to make it. The Crompton body was already dangerously overheated by the fight; a little more, and neither personality would have a corpus to inhabit.

  Loomis, with no scruples to hold him back, continued to press forward, seized vital synapses and took over all motor functions.

  By sunrise, he had won a total victory.

  Shakily, Loomis got to his feet. He touched the stubble on his chin, rubbed his numbed fingertips, and looked around. It was his body now. For the first time since Mars, he was seeing and feeling directly, instead of having all sensory information filtered and relayed to him through the Crompton personality. It felt good to breathe the stagnant air, to feel cloth against his body, to be hungry, to be alive! He had emerged from a gray shadow world into a land of brilliant colors. Wonderful! He wanted to keep it just like this.

  Poor Crompton . . .

  “Don’t worry, old man,” Loomis said. “You know, I’m doing this for your good also.”

  There was no answer from Crompton.

  “We’ll go back to Mars,” Loomis informed him. “Back to Elderberg. Things will work out.”

  Crompton did not, or could not, answer. Loomis became mildly alarmed.

  “Are you there, Crompton? Are you all right?”

  No answer.