Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “I’m sure of it,” said Robinson. “Tom, I’m grateful for this. I’ll use your body well.”

  “It’s not mine, really,” Blaine said. “Belonged to a fellow named Kranch. But I’ve grown fond of it. You’ll get used to its habits. Just remind it once in a while who’s boss. Sometimes it wants to go hunting.”

  Marie came up and kissed Blaine good-by with cold lips. Blaine said, “What will you do?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Go back to New York, I suppose.”

  “That’s probably best,” Blaine agreed.

  He looked around once more at the palm trees whispering under the sun, the blue expanse of the sea, and the great dark mountain above him cut with silver waterfalls. Then he turned and entered the Suicide Booth and closed the door behind him.

  There were no windows, no furniture except a single chair. The instructions posted on one wall were very simple. You just sat down and, at your leisure, closed the switch upon the right arm. You would then die, quickly and painlessly, and your body would be left intact.

  He thought again about the first time he died and wished it had been more interesting. By rights he should have rectified the error this time and gone down like Hull, hunted fiercely across a mountain ledge at sundown. Why couldn’t it have been like that? Why couldn’t death have come while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger’s charge, or climbing Mount Everest? Why, for the second time, would his death be so tame, so commonplace, so ordinary?

  But then why had he never really designed yachts?

  AN enterprising death, he realized again, would be out of character for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just this quick, commonplace, painless way. And all his life in the future must have gone into the forming and shaping of this death—a vague indication when Reilly died, a fair certainty in the Palace of Death, an implacable destiny when he settled in Taiohae.

  Still, no matter how ordinary, one’s death is the most interesting event of one’s life. Blaine looked forward eagerly to his.

  He had no complaint to make. Although he had lived in the future little over a year, he had gained its greatest prize—the hereafter.

  He felt again what he had experienced after leaving the Hereafter Building—release from the heavy, sodden, constant, unconscious fear of death that subtly weighed every action and permeated every movement. No man of his own century could live without the shadow that crept down the corridors of his mind like some grisly tapeworm, the ghost that haunted nights and days, the croucher behind comers, the shape behind doors, the unseen guest at every banquet, the unidentified figure in every landscape, always present, always waiting—

  No more!

  For now the ancient enemy was defeated. And men no longer died; they moved on!

  But he had gained even more than an afterlife. He had managed to squeeze and compress an entire lifetime into that year.

  He had been born in a white room with dazzling lights and a doctor’s bearded face above him, and a motherly nurse to feed him while he listened, alarmed, to the babble of strange tongues. He had ventured early into the world, raw and uneducated, and had stared at the oriental marvel of New York, and allowed a straighteyed fast-talking stranger to make a fool and nearly a corpse of him, until wiser heads rescued him from his folly and soothed his pain.

  Clothed in his fine, strong, hearty body, he had ventured out again, wiser this time, and had moved as an equal among men equipped with glittering weapons in the pursuit of danger and honor. And he had lived through that folly too, and, still older, had chosen an honorable occupation. But certain dark omens present at his birth finally reached fruition, and he had to flee his homeland and run to the farthest comer of the Earth.

  Yet he still managed to acquire a family on the way, a family with certain skeletons in the closet, but his all the same.

  In the fullness of manhood, he had come to a land he loved, taken a wife, and, on his honeymoon, seen the mountains of Moorea flaming in the sunset He had settled down to spend his declining months in peace and useful labor, and in fond recollection of the wonders he had seen. And so he had spent them, honored and respected by all.

  It was sufficient.

  Blaine turned the switch.

  35.

  NEW York was cold and wintery and a high wind howled down the avenues. Marie walked to a large graystone building near Third Avenue. Engraved above die door was the statement: “Dedicated to Free Communication Between Those on Earth and Those Beyond.”

  She entered the Spiritual Switchboard, walked to the information booth and showed a slip of paper.

  “That’s Messages Incoming,” said the pleasant, gray-haired receptionist “Straight down the hall to Room 32B.”

  Marie walked down the hall and entered a small gray room with several armchairs and a loudspeaker set in the wall. She waited.

  “Marie!” said a voice from the loudspeaker.

  “Tom!”

  “It’s very good to see you, Marie.”

  “But why have you waited so long to contact me?” she asked. “I thought—I was afraid you hadn’t made it.”

  “I reached the Threshold all right,” Blaine said. “But I took a little while getting oriented.”

  “What is it like?”

  “That’s hard to explain. Ray Melhill tried to tell me and I didn’t understand what he was talking about But I see now. He was perfectly right—color really is direction, and they’re both practically the same as sound. Position is what counts, because it’s all a question of wholenesses. You see, in Threshold you can experience a framework and perceive it also. But there’s no real dissociation. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Marie sadly.

  “Well, you’ll see it yourself some day. Tell me, how is Robinson?”

  “He’s fine,” Marie said. “He married Alice Kranch, you know.”

  “Oh, I know that. I mean has he started getting the religions together?”

  “He hasn’t thought about it.”

  “He will.”

  “Tom,” Marie said, “what about us? Will we meet again?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “But when? Can I—can I come now?”

  “No. You’ll know when the time is right.”

  “But, Tom, what if we’re separated? What will it be like in the hereafter? I don’t think I’m going to like it Fm afraid it’s going to be terribly strange and ghostly and horrible.”

  “You’re wrong,” Blaine told her. “I can’t explain it to you, but there’s nothing ghostly about it We’ll be together, only I can’t explain when.”

  “Oh, Tom!”

  “Marie, don’t worry. I’ve been a junior yacht designer three times in two lifetimes. It’s my destiny! Surely you don’t think it ends here! There’s more, much more!”

  “All right, Tom,” she promised. “I’ll wait.”

  THE SWEEPER OF LORAY

  You wish a universal panacea? A simple boon to grant—first decide what part of you it is that you wish to have survive!

  “ABSOLUTELY impossible,” declared Professor Carver.

  “But I saw it,” said Fred, his companion and bodyguard. “Late last night, I saw it! They carried in this hunter—he had his head half ripped off—and they—”

  “Wait,” Professor Carver said, leaning forward expectantly.

  They had left their spaceship before dawn, in order to witness the sunrise ceremonies in the village of Loray, upon the planet of the same name. Sunrise ceremonies, viewed from a proper distance, are often colorful and can provide a whole chapter for an anthropologist’s book; but Loray, as usual, proved a disappointment.

  Without fanfare, the sun rose, in answers to prayers made to it the preceding night. Slowly it hoisted its dull red expanse above the horizon, warming the topmost branches of the great rain-forest that surrounded the village. And the natives slept on . . .

  Not all the natives. Already the Sweeper was out, cleaning the debris between huts with his twig broom. He
slowly shuffled along, human-shaped but unutterably alien. The Sweeper’s face was a stylized blank, as though nature had drawn there a preliminary sketch of intelligent life. His head was strangely knobbed and his skin was pigmented a dirty gray.

  The Sweeper sang to himself as he swept, in a thick, guttural voice. In only one way was the Sweeper distinguishable from his fellow Lorayans: painted across his face was a broad black band. This was his mark of station, the lowest possible station in that primitive society.

  “Now then,” Professor Carver said, after the sun had arisen without incident, “a phenomenon such as you describe could not exist. And it most especially could not exist upon a debased, scrubby little planet like this.”

  “I saw what I saw,” Fred maintained. “I don’t know from impossible, Professor. I saw it. You want to pass it up, that’s up to you.”

  HE leaned against the gnarly bole of a stabicus tree, folded his arms across his meager chest and glowered at the thatch-roofed village. They had been on Loray for nearly two months and Fred detested the village more each day.

  He was an underweight, unlovely young man and he wore his hair in a bristling crewcut which accentuated the narrowness of his brow. He had accompanied the professor for close to ten years, had journeyed with him to dozens of planets, and had seen many strange and wonderful things. Everything he saw, however, only increased his contempt for the Galaxy at large. He desired only to return, wealthy and famous, or wealthy and unknown, to his home in Bayonne, New Jersey.

  “This thing could make us rich,” Fred accused. “And you want to pass it up.”

  Professor Carver pursed his lips thoughtfully. Wealth was a pleasant thought, of course. But the professor didn’t want to interrupt his important scientific work to engage in a wild goose chase. He was now completing his great book, the book that would fully amplify and document the thesis that he had put forth in his first paper, Color Blindness Among the Thang Peoples. He had expanded the thesis in his book, Lack of Coordination in the Drang Race. He had generalized it in his monumental Intelligence

  Deficiencies Around the Galaxy, in which he proved conclusively that intelligence among Non-Terrans decreases arithmetically as their planet’s distance from Terra increases geometrically.

  Now the thesis had come to full flower in Carver’s most recent work, his unifying effort, which was to be titled Underlying Causes of the Implicit Inferiority of Non-Terran Peoples.

  “If you’re right—” Carver said.

  “Look!” Fred cried. “They’re bringing in another! See for yourself!”

  Professor Carver hesitated. He was a portly, impressive, red-jowled man, given to slow and deliberate movement. He was dressed in a tropical explorer’s uniform, although Loray was in a temperate zone. He carried a leather swagger stick, and strapped to his waist was a large revolver, a twin to the one Fred wore.

  “If you’re right,” Carver said slowly, “it would indeed be, so to speak, a feather in the cap.”

  “Come on!” said Fred.

  FOUR srag hunters were carrying a wounded companion to the medicine hut, and Carver and Fred fell in beside them. The hunters were visibly exhausted; they must have trekked for days to bring their friend to the village, for the srag hunts ranged deep into the rain-forest.

  “Looks done for, huh?” Fred whispered.

  Professor Carver nodded. Last month he had photographed a srag, from a vantage point very high in a very tall, stout tree. He knew it for a large, ill-tempered, quick-moving beast, with a dismaying array of claws, teeth and horns. It was also the only non-taboo meat-bearing animal on the planet. The natives had to kill srags or starve.

  But the wounded man had not been quick enough with spear and shield, and the srag had opened him from throat to pelvis. The hunter had bled copiously, even though the wound had been hastily bound with dried grasses. Mercifully, he was unconscious.

  “That chap hasn’t a chance,” Carver remarked. “It’s a miracle he’s stayed alive this long. Shock alone, to say nothing of the depth and extent of the wound—”

  “You’ll see,” Fred said.

  The village had suddenly come awake. Men and women, gray-skinned, knobby-headed, looked silently as the hunters marched toward the medicine hut. The Sweeper paused to watch. The village’s only child stood before his parents’ hut, and, thumb in mouth, stared at the procession. Deg, the medicine man, came out to meet the hunters, already wearing his ceremonial mask. The healing dancers assembled, quickly putting on their makeup.

  “Think you can fix him, Doc?” Fred asked.

  “One may hope,” Deg replied piously.

  They entered the dimly lighted medicine hut. The wounded Lorayan was laid tenderly upon a pallet of grasses and the dancers began to perform before him. Deg started a solemn chant.

  “That’ll never do it,” Professor Carver pointed out to Fred, with the interested air of a man watching a steam shovel in operation. “Too late for faith healing. Listen to his breathing. Shallower, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” Fred said.

  Deg finished his chant and bent over the wounded hunter. The Lorayan’s breathing was labored. It slowed, hesitated . . .

  “It is time!” cried the medicine man. He took a small wooden tube cut of his pouch, uncorked it, and held it to the dying man’s lips. The hunter drank. And then—

  Carver blinked, and Fred grinned triumphantly. The hunter’s breathing was becoming stronger. As they watched, the great gash became a line of scar tissue, then a thin pink mark, then an almost invisible white line.

  The hunter sat up, scratched his head, grinned foolishly and asked for something to drink, preferably intoxicating.

  Deg declared a festival on the spot.

  CARVER and Fred moved to the edge of the rain-forest for a conference. The professor walked like a man in a dream. His pendulous lower lip was thrust out and occasionally he shook his head. “How about it?” Fred asked.

  “It shouldn’t be possible,” said Carver dazedly. “No substance in nature should react like that. And you saw it work last night also?”

  “Damned well right,” Fred said. “They brought in this hunter—he had his head pulled half off. He swallowed some of that stuff and healed right before my eyes.”

  “Man’s age-old dream,” Carver mused. “A universal panacea!”

  “We could get any price for stuff like that,” Fred said.

  “Yes, we could—as well as performing a duty to science,” Professor Carver reminded him sternly. “Yes, Fred, I think we should obtain some of that substance.”

  They turned and, with firm strides, marched back to the village.

  Dances were in progress, given by various members of the beast cults. At the moment, the Sathgohani, a cult representing a mediumsized deerlike animal, were performing. They could be recognized by the three red dots on their foreheads. Waiting their turn were the men of the Dresfeyxi and the Taganyes, cults representing other forest animals. The beasts adopted by the cults were taboo and there was an absolute injunction against their slaughter. Carver had been unable to discover the rationale behind this rule. The Lorayans refused to speak of it.

  Deg, the medicine man, had removed his ceremonial mask. He was seated in front of his hut, watching the dancing. He arose when the Earthmen approached him. “Peace!” he said.

  “Sure,” said Fred. “Nice job you did this morning.”

  Deg smiled modestly. “The gods answered our prayers.”

  “The gods?” said Carver. “It looked as though the serum did most of the work.”

  “Serum? Oh, the sersee juice!” Deg made a ceremonial gesture as he mentioned the name. “Yes, the sersee juice is the mother of the Lorayan people.”

  “We’d like to buy some,” Fred said bluntly, ignoring Professor Carver’s disapproving frown. “What would you take for a gallon?”

  “I am sorry,” Deg said.

  “How about some nice beads? Mirrors? Or maybe a couple of steel knives?”


  “It cannot be done,” the medicine man asserted. “The sersee juice is sacred. It must be used only for holy healing.”

  “Don’t hand me that,” Fred said, a flush mounting his sallow cheek. “You gooks think you can—”

  “We quite understand,” Carver broke in smoothly. “We know about sacred things. Sacred things are sacred. They are not to be touched by profane hands.”

  “Are you crazy?” Fred whispered in English.

  “You are a wise man,” Deg said gravely. “You understand why I must refuse you.”

  “Of course. But it happens, Deg, I am a medicine man in my own country.”

  “Ah? I did not know this!”

  “It is so. As a matter of fact, in my particular line, I am the highest medicine man.”

  “Then you must be a very holy man,” Deg said, bowing his head.

  “Man, he’s holy!” Fred put in emphatically. “Holiest man you’ll ever see around here.”

  “Please, Fred,” Carver said, blinking modestly. He said to the medicine man, “It’s true, although I don’t like to hear about it. Under the circumstances, however, you can see that it would not be wrong to give me some sersee juice. On the contrary, it is your priestly duty to give me some.”

  The medicine man pondered for a long time while contrary emotions passed just barely perceptibly over his almost blank face. At last he said, “It may be so. Unfortunately, I cannot do what you require.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there is so little sersee juice, so terribly little. There is hardly enough for the village.” Deg smiled sadly and walked away.

  LIFE in the village continued its simple, invariant way. The Sweeper moved slowly along, cleaning with his twig broom. The hunters trekked out in search of srags. The women of the village prepared food and looked after the village’s one child. The priests and dancers prayed nightly for the sun to rise in the morning. Everyone was satisfied, in a humble, submissive fashion.

  Everyone except the Earthmen.

  They had more talks with Deg and slowly learned the complete story of the sersee juice and the troubles surrounding it.