Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “You are disrupting the mail service,” said Williams 4.

  “That’s not all I’m going to disrupt,” Morrison growled. “I’m not afraid of dying. That was part of the gamble. But I’m damned if I’m going to die fifteen minutes after I’ve struck it rich!”

  “You have no choice.”

  “I do. I’m going to use that emergency telephone of yours.”

  “You can’t,” Williams 4 said. “I refuse to extrude it. And you could never reach it without the resources of a machine shop.”

  “Could be,” said Morrison. “I plan to find out.” He pulled out his empty revolver.

  “What are you going to do?” Williams 4 asked.

  “I’m going to see if I can smash you into scrap metal without the resources of a machine shop. I think your eyecells would be a logical place to begin.”

  “They would indeed,” said the robot. “I have no personal sense of survival, of course. But let me point out that you would be leaving all Venus without a postman. Many would suffer because of your antisocial action.”

  “I hope so,” Morison said, raising the revolver above his head.

  “Also,” the robot said hastily, “you would be destroying government property. That is a serious Offense.”

  Morrison laughed and swung the pistol. The robot moved its head quickly, dodging the blow. It tried to wriggle free, but Morrison’s two hundred pounds was seated firmly on its thorax.

  “I won’t miss this time,” Morrison promised, hefting the revolver.

  “Stop!” Williams 4 said. “It is my duty to protect government property, even if that property happens to be myself. You may use my telephone, Mr. Morrison. Bear in mind that this offense is punishable by a sentence of not more than ten and not less than five years in the Solar Swamp Penitentiary.”

  “Let’s have that telephone,” Morrison said.

  THE robot’s chest opened and a small telephone extruded. Morrison dialed Max Krandall and explained the situation.

  “I see, I see,” Krandall said. “All right, I’ll try to find Wilkes. But, Tom, I don’t know how much I can do. It’s after business hours. Most places are closed—”

  “Get them open again,” said Morrison. “I can pay for it. And get Jim Remstaater out of trouble, too.”

  “It can’t be done just like that. You haven’t established any rights to your claim. You haven’t even proved that your claim is valuable.”

  “Look at it.” Morrison turned the telephone so that Krandall could see the glowing walls of the ravine.

  “Looks real,” Krandall said. “But unfortunately, all that glitters is not goldenstone.”

  “What can we do?” Morrison asked.

  “We’ll have to take it step by step. I’ll ’port you the Public Surveyor. He’ll check your claim, establish its limits, and make sure no one else has filed on it. You give him a chunk of goldenstone to take back. A big chunk.”

  “How can I cut goldenstone? I don’t have any tools.”

  “You’ll have to figure out a way.

  He’ll take the chunk back for assaying. If it’s rich enough, you’re all set.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “Perhaps we better not talk about that,” Krandall said. “I’ll get right to Work on this, Tommy. Good luck!”

  Morrison signed off. He stood up and helped the robot to its feet.

  “In twenty-three years of service,” Williams 4 said, “this is the first time anybody has threatened the life of a government postal employee. I must report this to the police authorities at Venusborg, Mr. Morrison. I have no choice.”

  “I know,” Morrison said. “But I guess five or ten years in the penitentiary is better than dying.”

  “I doubt it. I carry mail there, you know. You will have the opportunity of seeing for yourself in about six months.”

  “What?” said Morrison, stunned.

  “In about six months, after I have completed my mail calls around the planet and returned to Venusborg. A matter like this must be reported in person. But first and foremost, the mails must go through.”

  “Thanks, Williams. I don’t know how—”

  “I am simply performing my duty,” the robot said as it climbed into the vortex. “If you are still on Venus in six months, I will be delivering your mail to the penitentiary.”

  “I won’t be here,” Morrison said. “So long, Williams!”

  The robot disappeared into the ’porting vortex. Then the vortex disappeared. Morrison was alone in the Venusian twilight.

  HE found an outcropping of goldenstone larger than a man’s head. He chipped at it with his pistol butt, and tiny particles danced and shimmered in the air. After an hour, he had put four dents in his revolver, but he had barely scratched the highly refractory surface of the goldenstone.

  The sandwolves began to edge forward. Morrison threw stones at them and shouted in his dry, cracked voice. The wolves retreated.

  He examined the outcropping again and found a hairline fault running along one edge. He concentrated his blows along the fault.

  The goldenstone refused to crack.

  Morrison wiped sweat from his eyes and tried to think. A chisel, he needed a chisel . . .

  He pulled off his belt. Putting the edge of the steel buckle against the crack, he managed to hammer it in a fraction of an inch. Three more blows drove the buckle firmly into the fault. With another blow, the outcropping sheared off cleanly. He had separated a twenty-pound piece from the cliff. At fifty dollars a troy ounce, this lump should be worth about twelve thousand dollars—if it assayed out as pure as it looked.

  The twilight had turned a deep gray when the Public Surveyor ’ported in. It was a short, squat robot with a conservative crackle-black finish.

  “Good day, sir,” the surveyor said. “You wish to file a claim? A standard unrestricted mining claim?”

  “That’s right,” Morrison said.

  “And where is the center of the aforesaid claim?”

  “Huh? The center? I guess I’m standing on it.”

  “Very well,” the robot said.

  Extruding a steel tape, it walked rapidly away from Morrison. At a distance of two hundred yards, it stopped. More steel tape fluttered as it walked, flew and climbed a square with Morrison at the center. When it had finished, the surveyor stood for a long time without moving.

  “What are you doing?” Morrison asked.

  “I’m making depth-photographs of the terrain,” the robot said. “It’s rather difficult in this light. Couldn’t you wait till morning?”

  “No!”

  “Well, I’ll just have to cope,” the robot said.

  It moved and stood, moved and stood, each subterranean exposure taking longer than the last as the twilight deepened. If it had had pores, it would have sweated.

  “There,” said the robot at last, “that takes care of it. Do you have a sample for me to take back?”

  “Here it is,” Morrison said, hefting the slab of goldenstone and handing it to the surveyor. “Is that all?”

  “Absolutely all,” the robot said. “Except, of course, that you haven’t given me the Deed of Search.”

  MORRISON blinked. “I haven’t given you the what?”

  “The Deed of Search. That is a government document showing that the claim you are filing on is free, as per government order, of fissionable material in excess of fifty per cent of the total mass to a depth of sixty feet. It’s a mere formality, but a necessary one.”

  “I never heard of it,” Morrison said.

  “It became a requirement last week,” explained the surveyor. “You don’t have the Deed? Then I’m afraid your standard unrestricted claim is invalid.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “Well,” the robot said, “you could change your standard unrestricted claim to a special restricted claim. That requires no Deed of Search.”

  “What does the special restricted part mean?”

  “It means that in
five hundred years all rights revert to the Government of Venus.”

  “All right!” Morrison shouted. “Fine! Good! Is that all?”

  “Absolutely all,” the surveyor said. “I shall bring this sample back and have it assayed and evaluated immediately. From it and the depth-photographs we can extrapolate the value and extent of your claim.”

  “Send me back something to take care of the wolves,” Morrison said. “And food. And listen—I want a Prospector’s Special.”

  “Yes, sir. It will all be ’ported to you—if your claim is of sufficient value to warrant the outlay.”

  The robot climbed into the vortex and vanished.

  Time passed, and the wolves edged forward again. They snarled at the rocks Morrison threw, but they didn’t retreat. Jaws open and tongues lolling, they crept up the remaining yards between them and the prospector.

  Then the leading wolf leaped back and howled. A gleaming vortex had appeared over his head and a rifle had fallen from the vortex, striking him on a forepaw.

  The wolves scrambled away. Another rifle fell from the vortex. Then a large box marked Grenades, Handle With Care. Then another box marked Desert Ration K.

  Morrison waited, staring at the gleaming mouth of the vortex. It crossed the sky to a spot a quarter of a mile away and paused there, and then a great round brass base emerged from the vortex, and the mouth widened to allow an even greater bulge of brass to which the base was attached. The bulge grew higher as the base was lowered to the sand. When the last of it appeared, it stood alone in the horizon-to-horizon expanse, a gigantic ornate brass punchbowl in the desert The vortex rose and paused again over the bowl.

  Morrison waited, his throat raw and aching. Now a small trickle came out of the vortex and splashed down into the bowl. Still Morrison didn’t move.

  AND then it came. The trickle became a roar that sent the wolves and kites fleeing in terror, and a cataract poured from the vortex to the huge punchbowl.

  Morrison began staggering toward it. He should have ordered a canteen, he told himself thirstily, stumbling across the quarter of a mile of sand. But at last he stood beneath the Prospector’s Special, higher than a church steeple, wider than a house, filled with water more precious than goldenstone itself. He turned the spigot at the bottom. Water soaked the yellow sands and ran in rivulets down the dune.

  He should have ordered a cup or glass, Morrison thought, lying on his back with open mouth.

  SVENGALI IN WESTCHESTER

  I consider myself a reasonable man, not given to hasty decisions. I do not laugh at other people’s beliefs, for I might be wrong, although it is unlikely. Still, the mathematical possibility is there, and I generally respect it. But a time came when I had to do something quickly and decisively about Helen.

  On the evening in question, I came home from work at my usual hour, went directly into the kitchen and kissed Helen on the neck. Helen has a pretty neck, and as a rule enjoys being kissed on it. Tonight she seemed preoccupied.

  “How did that lunch go today?” I asked. I pride myself on being the sort of husband who asks about charity lunches, church bazaars, flower shows and school board meetings.

  “I didn’t go,” Helen said.

  “Why not?” I knew she had been planning that lunch for over a month.

  “I just didn’t feel like it,” Helen said, becoming suddenly very busy with the beans on the stove. Helen is a college graduate, but they never taught her guile. When she attempts an untruth, she’s as obvious as a kitten at a dog show.

  “Out with it, woman,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened,” Helen said. “I stayed in all day. It just wasn’t a good day.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated.

  “Professor Marзon told me not to go out today,” she said at last, speaking very rapidly. “He said this is an especially bad day for a Gemini. An accident-happening day. Mars is in the House of the Moon, and Saturn—” She stopped when she saw the pained and incredulous look on my face.

  “We will discuss this after dinner,” I said, and stalked into the living-room.

  Some two months ago, a gipsy tearoom opened in our part of Westchester. It was one of those places with chintz curtains, copper kettles, fake Tudor furniture, and a fortune teller named Professor Marзon. Helen and some of her friends had their fortunes told. They were mightily impressed as women tend to be by fortune tellers. I viewed it as a harmless amusement similar to bridge or attending television shows, and nodded agreeably at the stories of Professor Marзon’s uncanny insight.

  But Helen was carrying the thing too far. She went dutifully at least once a week, and our bookshelves were piled with horoscopes, dream books, tarot cards, and the like. Now it had reached the point where Helen’s actions were being influenced by this mountebank, dictated, in fact! A Svengali was making my wife his Trilby! It was just too much.

  I ceased brooding and started glowering. I am certainly a reasonable man, but enough is enough. By profession I am an aircraft design engineer. I work with concrete physical facts. At Turner Aviation our ships do not fly because Venus is in the ascendancy, nor do all our computations fail us when Mars is in the House of the Moon, or some such nonsense. Professor Marзon was bringing superstition back to Westchester. He had overstepped himself. I had to end it.

  After dinner I proceeded to demolish with irrefutable logic the entire mystique of fortune telling. I am a scientific man and I went about it scientifically. I spoke of the laws of probabilities concerning tea-leaf patterns, and the astronomical absurdities inherent in astrology. I went at considerable length into the refractive index of crystal balls, and ended by explaining the mathematical concept of chance concerning tarot cards. I leaned back exhausted but satisfied and said, “Well?”

  “I have missed my favourite television programme,” Helen said icily. She detests being lectured.

  “Do you understand what I have been saying?”

  “Of course,” Helen said. “I am no more superstitious than you. But Professor Marзon is different.”

  “He’s undoubtedly shrewd,” I said, “but the methods of fortune tellers are well known. They guess many things from your general appearance, your clothes, your voice, and vocabulary. They make vague statements until something fits. Then they—”

  Helen shook her head stubbornly. “Professor Marзon’s predictions are not based on appearance. Why don’t you go yourself and find out?”

  At that moment The Idea dawned upon me. I paused to let it assume full shape and texture. Yes, I felt sure it would work.

  Slowly I said, “He probably knows all about me through you, so it wouldn’t be a fair test. I’ll bring a friend, though.”

  “What friend?” Helen asked.

  “Nobody you know. I can’t take a chance on your accidentally giving information to Marзon.”

  “I thought I knew all your friends,” Helen said suspiciously.

  “You don’t know this one. If Marзon is completely wrong about him—”

  “He couldn’t be completely wrong!”

  “But if he is?”

  “We’ll see,” Helen said.

  I leaned back in my armchair and opened the evening paper. I permitted myself a small smile. Approached rationally, every problem has a solution. And I am rational, if nothing else.

  We arranged the meeting for a Saturday afternoon in the tearoom. Helen and Professor Marзon were already at a table when I arrived with my friend. Helen looked strangely apprehensive. Professor Marзon was in his fifties, dressed completely in black, and he had a charlatan’s little beard. He seemed amused; I introduced Richard Dake.

  Marзon studied my friend intently, but Dake wasn’t an easy man to size up. He was very tall and gaunt, one of those ageless men. His tweed suit was of a good make and well pressed, but a shade threadbare. His tie was fastened fastidiously, with perhaps a hint of the dandy. Upon his finger was a signet ring, but the crest was indecipherable.

  W
e drank tea, and Marзon’s bright, beady eyes darted from Dake’s unassuming, honest face to his thin brown hair, his bleak grey eyes, his strong but uncalloused hands. He listened intently to the slight burr in Dake’s speech.

  Finally, Marзon began. And I must admit, it was an impressive performance. Because he started with me.

  “For you,” he said, “a time of trial and travail is at hand. I wish you good fortune in it.”

  Then he turned to Dake. Dake, he said, was a university man from a West country family. Business had not been going well; he had been considering a change in occupation. Marзon watched intently, but he could have read more from a stone wall. Not a nerve in Dake’s face twitched, not a muscle moved.

  Drawing his own inferences from that, Marзon went on to say that Dake was a man of iron nerve and determination, a man superior to the forces of fate and the bludgeonings of nature. His sterling character would be rewarded, Marзon said, in a position of trust and service to mankind.

  And Dake didn’t flicker an eyelash.

  When Marзon finished we thanked him and left. As soon as we were outside, Helen said, “Well?”

  “The professor was wrong about a few little things,” I said casually. “For example, Mr. Dake is not a graduate.”

  Dake grinned. Helen looked a trifle startled.

  “Nor does Mr. Dake come from the West country,” I said. “Where were you born, Mr. Dake?”

  “Manchester.”

  “And where have you lived most of your life?”

  “In London.”

  “But your accent—” Helen began.

  “A bit of a burr helps in my line of work,” Dake told her.

  “I came across Mr. Dake,” I said to Helen, “in the East End—in Whitechapel, to be exact. He was sleeping in a doorway.”

  Helen blinked rapidly but said nothing.

  “The fact is, I’m down and out,” Dake said, grinning a broad and silly grin, all the reserve I had schooled him in now gone. “Down and out, and pleased with my station in life.”

  “Oh!” Helen said at last. “How disgusting! It isn’t fair!”

  “It’s perfectly fair,” I told her. “Professor Marзon reads men’s fortunes, remember? Not their outward appearances!” I extracted some notes from my wallet. “Thank you, Mr. Dake,” I said. “You may keep the suit, of course, and the shoes. Tell me, what are you going to do with that money?”