Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Just as you please,” the doctor said. “I think that our time is just about up. But if you’d care to lie down in the anteroom—”

  “No, thanks, I’ll go home,” Lanigan said.

  He stood up, walked across the green carpet to the door, looked back at the five-paintings and at the doctor, who smiled at him encouragingly. Then Lanigan went through the door and into the anteroom, through the anteroom to the outer door and through that and down the corridor to the stairs and down the stairs to the street.

  He walked and looked at the trees, on which green leaves moved faintly and predictably in a faint breeze. There was traffic, which moved soberly down one side of the street and up the other. The sky was an unchanging blue, and had obviously been so for quite some time.

  Dream? He pinched himself. A dream pinch? He did not awaken. He shouted. An imaginary shout? He did not waken.

  He was in the street of the world of his nightmare.

  The street at first seemed like any normal city street. There were paving stones, cars, people, buildings, a sky overhead, a sun in the sky. All perfectly normal. Except that nothing was happening.

  The, pavement never once yielded beneath his feet. Over there was the First National City Bank; it had been here yesterday, which was bad enough; but worse it would be there without fail tomorrow, and the day after that, and the year after that. The First National City Bank (Founded 1892) was grotesquely devoid of possibilities. It would never become a tomb, an airplane, the bones of a prehistoric monster. Sullenly it would remain a building of concrete and steel, madly persisting in its fixity until men with tools came and tediously tore it down.

  Lanigan walked through this petrified world, under a blue sky that oozed a sly white around the edges, teasingly promising something that was never delivered. Traffic moved implacably to the right, people crossed at crossings, clocks were within minutes of agreement.

  Somewhere between the town lay countryside; but Lanigan knew that the grass did not grow under one’s feet; it simply lay still, growing no doubt, but imperceptibly, unusable to the senses. And the mountains were still tall and black, but they were giants stopped in mid-stride. They would never march against a golden (or purple or green) sky.

  The essence of life, Dr. Sampson had once said, is change. The essence of death is immobility. Even a corpse has a vestige of life about it as long as its flesh rots, as long as maggots still feast on its blind eyes and blowflies suck the juices from the burst intestines.

  Lanigan looked around at the corpse of the world and perceived that it was dead.

  He screamed. He screamed while people gathered around and looked at him (but didn’t do anything or become anything), and then a policeman came as he was supposed to (but the sun didn’t change shape once), and then an ambulance came down the invariant street (but without trumpets, minus strumpets, on four wheels instead of a pleasing three or twenty-five) and the ambulance men brought him to a building which was exactly where they expected to find it, and there was a great deal of talk by people who stood untransformed, asking questions in a room with relentlessly white walls.

  And there was evening and there was morning, and it was the first day. END

  BUDGET PLANET

  This extract from Robert Sheckley’s soon-to-be published novel, DIMENSION OF MIRACLES, stands quite well and quite brilliantly alone; however it will not hurt you to know that the book concerns the travels of one Harry Carmody, who, having been spirited away from Earth and subsequently abandoned, is trying to find his way back to his home planet. Carmody has been advised to seek out a man named Maudsley, a planet-builder by trade.

  “SO THIS IS IT, EH, ORIN?” Maudsley said.

  “Yes sir, this is it,” Orin, the man on his left said, smiling proudly. “What do you think of it, sir?”

  Maudsley turned around slowly and surveyed the meadow, the mountains, the sun, the river, the forest. His face betrayed no expression. He said, “What do you think of it, Brookside?”

  Brookside said, in a tremulous voice, “Well sir, I think that Orin and I did a nice job. A really nice job, if you take into account that it was our first independent project.”

  “And do you concur in that judgment, Orin?” Maudsley asked.

  “Certainly, sir,” Orin said.

  Maudsley bent down and plucked a blade of grass. He sniffed it and threw it away. He scuffed the dirt beneath his feet, then stared for several moments full into the blazing sun. In a measured voice, he said, “I am amazed, truly amazed. But in a most unpleasant way. I ask you two to build a world for one of my customers and you come up with this! Do you really consider yourselves engineers?”

  The two aides did not reply. They had stiffened, like boys awaiting the birch rod.

  “Engineers!” Maudsley said, getting almost fifty foot-pounds of contempt into the word. “ ‘Creative but practical scientists who can build the planet where and when you want it.’ Do either of you recognize those words?”

  “They’re from the standard brochure,” Orin said.

  “That is correct,” Maudsley replied. “Now, do you consider this a good example of ‘creative, practical engineering’ ?”

  Both men were silent. Then Brookside blurted out, “Well sir, yes sir, I do!

  “We examined the job specs very carefully. The request was for a Type 34Bc4 planet with certain variations. And that’s exactly what we built. This is only a corner of it, of course. But still—”

  “But still, I can see what you did and judge accordingly,” Maudsley said. “Orin! What kind of a heating unit did you use?”

  “A type 05 sun, sir,” Orin replied. “It fitted the thermal requirements nicely.”

  “I daresay it did. But this was a budget world, you will remember. If we don’t keep the costs down, we don’t make a profit. And the biggest single cost item is the heating unit.”

  “We are aware of that, sir,” Brookside said. “We didn’t at all like to use an 05 type sun for a single-planet system. But the heat and radiation requirements—”

  “Haven’t you learned anything from me?” Maudsley cried. “This type of star is entirely superfluous. You there—” He beckoned to the workmen. “Take it down.”

  The workmen hurried forward with a folding ladder. One man braced it and another man unfolded it, ten times, a hundred times, a million times. Two other workmen raced up the ladder as fast as it went up.

  “Handle it carefully!” Maudsley called up to them. “And be sure you’re wearing gloves! That thing’s hot!”

  The workmen at the very top of the ladder unhooked the star, folded it into itself and put it into a padded box marked STAR: HANDLE WITH CARE.

  When the lid fell, everything went black.

  “Hasn’t anyone any sense around here?” Maudsley asked. “Damn it all, let there be light.”

  And just like that, there was light.

  “OK,” Maudsley said. “That 05 type sun goes back into storage. On a job like this we can use a G13 type star.”

  “But sir,” Orin said nervously, “it isn’t hot enough.”

  “I know that,” Maudsley said. “That’s where you have to use your creativity. If you move the star closer in, it’ll be hot enough.”

  “Yes sir, it will,” Brookside said. “But it’ll be emitting PR rays without enough space to allow them to dissipate harmlessly. And that might kill off the entire race that’s going to occupy this planet.”

  Maudsley said, very slowly and distinctly, “Are you trying to tell me that G13 type stars are dangerous?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t mean it exactly that way,” Orin said. “I meant to say, they can be dangerous, just like anything else in the universe, if proper precautions are not taken.

  “That’s more like it,” Maudsley said.

  “The proper precautions,” Brookside said, “involve, in this case, the wearing of protective lead suits weighing some fifty pounds each. But this is impractical, since the average member of this race only weighs eight poun
ds.”

  “That’s their lookout,” Maudsley said. “It’s not our business to tell them how to live their lives. Am I supposed to be responsible Whenever they stub their toe on a rock I put on their planet? Besides, they don’t have to wear lead suits. They can buy one of my optional extras, a Solar Screen that’ll block out the PR rays.”

  Both men smiled nervously. But Orin said timidly, “I believe this is a somewhat underprivileged species, sir. I think perhaps they can’t afford the Solar Screen.”

  “Well, if not right now, maybe later,” Maudsley said. “And anyhow, the PR radiations aren’t instantly fatal. Even with it, they’ll have an average lifespan of 9.3 years, which ought to be enough for anyone.”

  “Yes sir,” the two assistant engineers said, not happily.

  “Next,” Maudsley said, “what’s the height of those mountains?”

  “They average six thousand feet above sea level,” Brookside said.

  “At least three thousand feet too high,” Maudsley said. “Do you think mountains grow on trees? Pare them down and put what you have left over into the warehouse.”

  Brookside took out a notebook and jotted down the change. Maudsley continued to pace around, looking and frowning.

  “How long are those trees supposed to last?”

  “Eight hundred years, sir. They’re the new, improved model Apple-oak. They give fruit, shade, nuts, refreshing beverages, three useful fabrics; they make excellent building material, hold the soil in place, and—”

  “Are you trying to bankrupt me?” Maudsley roared. “Two hundred years is entirely long enough for a tree! Drain off most of their elan vital and store it in the life-force accumulator!”

  “They won’t be able to perform all of their designed functions, then,” Orin said.

  “Then cut down on their functions! Shade and nuts is plenty, we don’t have to make a damned treasure chest out of those trees! Now then, who put those cows out there?”

  “I did, sir,” Brookside said. “I thought it would make the place look—well, sort of inviting, sir.”

  “You oaf,” Maudsley said, “the time to make a place look inviting is before the sale, not after! This place was sold unfurnished. Put those cows into the protoplasm vat.”

  “Yes sir,” Orin said. “Terribly sorry, sir. Is there anything else?”

  “There’re about ten thousand other things wrong,” Maudsley said. “But you can figure out those for yourselves, I hope. What, for example, is this?” He pointed at Carmody. “A statue or something? Is he supposed to sing a song or recite a poem when the new race arrives?” Carmody said, “Sir, I am not part of this. A friend of yours named Malichrone sent me, and I’m trying to get home to my own planet—”

  Maudsley clearly did not hear what Carmody was saying. For, while Carmody was trying to speak, Maudsley was saying, “Whatever he is, the job specs don’t call for him. So stick him back in the protoplasm vat with the cows.”

  “Hey!” Carmody shouted as workmen lifted him up by his arms. “Hey, wait a minute!” he screamed. “I’m not a part of this planet! Malichrone sent me! Wait, hold on, listen to me!”

  “You really ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” Maudsley went on, oblivious to Carmody’s shrieks. “What was that supposed to be? One of your interior decorating touches, Orin?”

  “Oh no,” Orin said. “I didn’t put him there.”

  “Then it was you, Brookside.”

  “I never saw him before in my life, chief.”

  “Hmm,” Maudsley said. “You’re both fools, but you’ve never been liars. Hey!” he shouted to the workmen. “Bring him back here!”

  “All right, pull yourself together,” Maudsley said to Carmody, who was shaking uncontrollably. “Get a grip on yourself, I can’t wait around here while you have a fit of hysterics! Better now? All right, would you mind explaining just what you’re doing trespassing on my property and why I shouldn’t have you converted into protoplasm?”

  “I see,” Maudsley said, after Carmody had finished explaining. “It’s an interesting story, though I’m sure you’ve over-dramatized it. Still, here you are, and you’re looking for a planet called—Earth?”

  “That is correct, sir,” Carmody said.

  “Earth,” Maudsley mused, scratching his head. “This is most fortunate for you; I seem to remember the place.”

  “Do you really, Mr. Maudsley?”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure of it,” Maudsley said. “It’s a small green planet, and it supports a monomorphic humanoid race like yourself. Am I right?”

  “Completely right!” Carmody said.

  “I have rather a memory for these things,” Maudsley said. “And in this particular case, as it happens, I built Earth.”

  “Did you really, sir?” Carmody asked.

  “Yep. I remember distinctly, because in the course of building it, I also invented science. Perhaps you will find the story amusing.” He turned to his aides. “And you might find the tale instructive.”

  No one was going to deny Maudsley the right to tell a story. So Carmody and the assistant engineers assumed attentive postures, and Maudsley began.

  THE STORY OF THE CREATION

  OF EARTH

  I was still quite a small contractor then. I put up a planet here and there, and I got to do an occasional dwarf star. But jobs were always hard to come by, and the customers were invariably capricious, faultfinding, and slow in their payments. Customers were hard to please in those days; they argued about every little detail. Change this, change that, why must water flow downhill, the gravity’s too heavy, the hot air rises when it ought to fall. And so forth.

  I was quite naive in those days. I used to explain the esthetic and practical reasons for everything I did. Before long, the questions and the explanations were taking longer than the jobs. There was entirely too much talk-talk. I knew that I had to do something about it, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  Then, just before the Earth project, a whole new approach to customer relations began to shape itself in my mind. I found myself muttering to myself, “Form follows function.” I liked the way it sounded. But then I would ask myself, “Why must form follow function?” And the reason I gave myself was, “Form follows function because that is an immutable law of nature and one of the fundamental axioms of applied science.” I liked the sound of that, too, although it didn’t make much sense.

  But sense didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had made a new discovery. I had unwittingly stumbled into the art of advertising and salesmanship, and I had discovered the gimmick of great possibilities: Namely, the doctrine of scientific determinism. Earth was my first test case, and that is why I will always remember it.

  A tall, bearded old man with piercing eyes had come to me and ordered a planet. (That was how your planet began, Carmody.) Well, I did the job quickly, in six days I believe, and thought that would be the end of it. It was another of those budget planets, and I had cut a few corners here and there. But to hear the owner complain, you’d have thought I had stolen the eyes out of his head.

  “Why are there so many tornadoes?” he asked.

  “It’s part of the atmosphere circulation system,” I told him. Actually, I had been a little rushed at that time; I had forgotten to put in an air circulation overload valve.

  “Three quarters of the place is water!” he told me. “And I clearly specified a 4 to 1 land-to-water ratio!”

  “Well, we couldn’t do it that way!” I said to him. I had lost his ridiculous specifications; I never can keep track of these absurd little one-planet projects.

  “And you’ve filled what little land you gave me with deserts and swamps and jungles and mountains.”

  “It’s scenic,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t care from scenic!” the fellow thundered. “Oh, sure, one ocean, a dozen lakes, a couple rivers, one or two mountain ranges, that would have been fine. Dresses the place up, gives the inhabitants a good feeling. But what you gave me is shlock!”
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  “There’s a reason for it,” I said. In point of fact, we couldn’t make the job pay except by using reconstituted mountains, a lot of rivers and oceans as filler, and a couple of deserts I had bought cheap from Ourie the planet-junker. But I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “A reason!” he screamed. “What will I tell my people? I’m putting an entire race on that planet, maybe two or three. They’ll be humans, made in my own image, and humans are notoriously picky, just as I am. What am I supposed to tell them?”

  Well, I knew what he could tell them, but I didn’t want to be offensive; so I pretended to give the matter some thought. And strangely enough, I did think. And I came up with the gimmick to end all gimmicks.

  “You just tell them the plain scientific truth,” I said. “You tell them that, scientifically, everything that is must be.”

  “Huh?” he said.

  “It’s determinism,” I said, making up the name on the spur of the moment. “It’s quite simple, though a bit esoteric. To start with, form follows function; therefore your planet is exactly as it should be by the simple fact of being at all. Next, science is invariable; so if anything isn’t invariable, it isn’t science. And finally, everything follows definite rules. You can’t always figure out what those rules are, but you can be sure they’re there. So, it stands to reason that no one ought to ask why this instead of that? Instead, everyone ought to ask how does it work?”

  Well, he asked me some pretty tough questions, and he was a pretty smart old fellow. But he didn’t know crap about engineering; his field was ethics and morals and religion and spook-stuff like that. So of course, he just wasn’t able to come up with any real objections. He was one of these types who loves abstractions, and he started repeating, “That which is is that which must be. Hmm, a very intriguing formula and not without its patina of stoicism. I shall incorporate some of these insights into the lessons I give to my people . . . But tell me this: how can I reconcile this indeterminate fatality of science with the free will I plan to give to my people?”

  Well, the old boy almost had me there. I smiled and coughed to give myself time to think, and then I said, “The answer is obvious!” Which is always a good answer, as far as it goes.