Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Wait!” cried Mira.

  Immediately after her Carson said, “The launch has stopped, sir! They’re ejecting something!”

  “Take aim on it,” Havilland said. “Steady, now—”

  “It’s a man in a spacesuit,” Carson cried.

  “It’s De Vries!” Mira said.

  “That is an unwarranted assumption,” Havilland said. “For all we know it could be nothing more than De Vries’s spacesuit packed with plasma and set to go off.”

  “I think it’s De Vries inside,” Carson said, checking his instruments. “The heat-signature—”

  “I can’t take any chances,” Havilland said. “Stand ready . . .”

  Mira said, choosing her words with care, “If you destroy that spacesuit, Mr. Havilland, I will make it my life’s work to bring you to court-martial and have you cashiered from the service . . . unless I can arrange to have you hanged, which would be much better.”

  “There’s no reason for you to take that tone with me,” Havilland said. “This is extreme war conditions. I’m just taking normal precautions.”

  “Contact!” Carson cried as the spacesuit came up against the hull of the Eindhoven.

  “Nothing has happened,” Mira pointed out.

  “They could be waiting to explode it inside, by remote,” Havilland said. He was greeted by stony silence. “Very well, bring it aboard.”

  Commander De Vries was cramped from his long hours in space armor, but he was brisk and businesslike as always. Once out of the armor he got onto his control panel at once. “Navigation? Take these coordinates. Relay them to the fleet. Tell everyone to be prepared to execute on my order.”

  He turned to Mira and Havilland. “They’re on our side. They are a race known as the d’Tarth. That’s the closest I can come to pronouncing it.”

  “And they are friendly?” Havilland said.

  “Let’s say they’re not unfriendly. They share at least one thing with us. They too want to destroy the Hothri.”

  “How did you learn all this?” Havilland asked. “We obviously don’t share any language with them, and I somehow doubt you learned theirs in the few hours you spent with them.”

  “I think we’ll be a long time learning their language,” De Vries said. “They don’t have anything like our sentence structure. I don’t even know if they have separate words. They hiss and chirp and we can’t even form most of their sounds.”

  “How did you learn about their hatred of the Hothri?”

  Just then a signal was received telling that the fleet had acknowledged setting the new coordinates and were now standing by for further orders.

  “Get ready,” De Vries said. He turned to Havilland and Mira Falken. “One picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. The reason the alien wanted so badly for me to go into his ship was because he had drawing materials there.”

  “He drew his situation for you?”

  “Not exactly,” De Vries said. “I did most of the drawing.”

  He took from the pouch of his spaceship launch a handful of crumpled sheets of heavy paper. It looked like some kind of papyrus. There were drawings on them.

  “Here’s the most important one,” De Vries said. He showed them the sheet. There was no mistaking the characteristic outline of a Hothri warrior.

  “Good work, Commander. But how did you discover they were enemies of the Hothri?”

  “See that tear in the middle of the page? I got the idea when the d’Tarth pulled out a sort of dagger and drove it through the center of the paper.”

  De Vries displayed the rest of the sheets. They showed a d’Tarth fleet approaching a planet; intercepted by a Hothri fleet; getting badly mauled; retreating with ten ships remaining.

  “You consider that evidence?” Havilland asked.

  “Evidence enough for me,” De Vries said. “These people fought a battle with the Hothri and lost. This is the area of the battle. We traced the vectors of Hothri ships. But they weren’t going to their home world. They were coming here.”

  “Well, it’s good to have allies,” Havilland said. “Now what?”

  “As planned, we are going to the Hothri world to finish what we began.”

  “But your coordinates were wrong! They brought us here!”

  “Correct. But the new coordinates—the ones the d’Tarth gave me—are correct. They’ll take us to the Hothri planet.”

  “And what about the d’Tarth?”

  “They’re coming, too. They accepted my proposal that we make a combined attack.”

  “I’d like to suggest,” Havilland said, “that making a joint attack with a new and untried ally definitely falls into the political arena. I strongly advise that we report this to the League, and get a firm directive before we commit ourselves to unknown complications and possible treachery.”

  “There’s no time for that,” De Vries said. Into the annunciator he said, “All ships! Stand by for orders!”

  “But what if it’s a trap?”

  “Then we’ve had it. Execute the course order!”

  The Eindhoven winked out of sight. A moment later, the rest of the ships at his command also disappeared into FTL space.

  The d’Tarth fleet hung there for a moment. Then, close to simultaneously, they, too winked out.

  The reappearance of the combined fleets in the vicinity of the long-sought-for Hothri world is a matter of universal history. On Arista, the day is celebrated as the important occasion when De Vries’s counter-tactics resulted in the Hothri fleet being hastily recalled to the home world, and Arista was saved.

  Of course, it wasn’t quite so easy as that. But that was the beginning of the end of the war against the Hothri.

  END CITY

  (Revised Version)

  The way it can happen is like this: You’re leaning back in your first-class seat on Fat Cat Spacelines with a cigar in your face and a glass of champagne in your hand, going from Depredation City on Earth to Spoilsville Junction on Arcturus XII. Magda will be waiting for you just behind the customs barrier, and the party in your honor will be going full swing at the Ultima Hilton. And you realize that, after a lifetime of struggle you’re finally rich, sexy, successful, and respected. Life is like a ball of chicken liver, rich and tasty and dripping with grease. You’ve worked a long dirty time to get where you are now, and you’re ready at last to enjoy it.

  Just at this moment the landing sign flashes on.

  You say to the stewardess, “Tell me, pretty one, what is going on?”

  “We’re putting down at End City,” she tells you.

  “But that wasn’t scheduled. Why are we landing there?”

  She shrugs. “That’s where the ship’s computer took us, and now we have to land here.”

  “Now look,” you say sternly, “I was assured by my very good friend J. Williams Nash, the President of this line, that there would be no unscheduled stops.”

  “End City terminates all previous assurances,” she tells you. “Maybe you didn’t want to come here, but you sure as hell have arrived.”

  You fasten your safety belt and think, just my stupid luck. Sweat your ass off all your life, lie, cheat, steal, and just when you’re ready to have a little fun, up comes End City.

  It’s pretty easy to get into End City. All you have to do is show up. Park your spaceship in the junkyard. There’s nothing to sign. Don’t worry about a thing. Come around later and meet the boys.

  The Quicksilver Kid swaggers up real cool and asks, “Hey, what do you guys do for kicks around here?”

  Mort the Snort says, “We take drugs like Hope-98.”

  “What is the effect of Hope-98?” asks the Kid.

  “It makes you think you got a future.”

  The Quicksilver Kid looks wistful. “Man, I gotta score me some of that stuff.”

  Meet Sweet Lucy, girl of a thousand bodies, all of them gross.

  “I takes myself down to the Celestial Body Shop nearly every Monday, and each time I’m determined to
git myself a real pretty body, you know the kind I mean, pretty. But each time it’s like this compulsion comes over me and I pick a big fat saggy number just like I always had. If I could ever lick that weirdo compulsion I’d be in real good shape.”

  Dr. Bernstein’s comment: “Her hangup is her salvation. Down chicks always run true to form. Kick her as you leave. She digs the attention.”

  Giardano had done a lot of traveling, but he never did get far: “It’s simple truth to say that this galaxy is just like the inside of my head. The further you go, the less you see. Been to Acmena IV, looks just like Arizona. Sardis VI is a ringer for Quebec, and Omeone VI is a duplicate of Marie Byrd’s Land.”

  “What does End City look like?”

  “If I didn’t know better,” Giardano says, “I’d think I was back home in Hoboken.”

  In End City they have to import everything. They import cats and cockroaches, garbage bags and garbage, cops and crime statistics. They import spoiled milk and rotten vegetables, they import blue suede and orange taffeta, they import orange peels, instant coffee, Volkswagen parts, Champion spark plugs. They import dreams and nightmares. They import you and me.

  “But what’s it all for?”

  “That’s a stupid question. You might as well ask what reality is for.”

  “Well . . . what is reality for?”

  “Look me up any time. I live at 000 Zero Street, at the intersection of Minus Boulevard, just across from Null Park.”

  “Is that address supposed to have a symbolic meaning?”

  “No, man, it’s just where I live.”

  Nobody can afford the necessities in End City. But luxuries are available for everyone. Ten thousand tons of Chincoteague oysters are distributed every week, free. But you can’t cop cocktail sauce for love or money.

  COLLOQUY IN LIMBO LANE:

  “Good day, young man. Are you still caught up in the ways-means fallacy?”

  “Guess I am, Professor.”

  “Thought as much. Good day, young man.”

  “Who was that?”

  “That was the Professor. He always asks about the ways-means fallacy.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Don’t care.”

  Dr. Bernstein says: “Monism postulates that there’s only one thing, dualism says there’s two things. No matter which is true, you still haven’t got much to work with.”

  “Hey!” says Johnny Cadenza. “Maybe that explains why everything around here tastes either like chili or chow mein.”

  TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF END CITY:

  “Hell is an infinitely delayed trip.”

  “Hell is who you really are.”

  “Hell is getting what you don’t need.”

  “Hell is getting what you do need.”

  “Hell is repetition.”

  Look straight ahead: the blackness of the universe, of the gulf, of the end, of the big leap into nothingness. Behind you are all the places where you’ve been: last year’s hopes, yesterday’s trips, the old dreams. All used up now, all gone.

  You are at the final stop. You sit down and try to figure out what to do.

  Welcome to End City.

  SARKANGER

  Richard Gregor and Frank Arnold sat in the offices of the AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Corporation filling in the long slow time between customers. Gregor, tall, thin, and lachrymose, was playing a complicated game of solitaire. Arnold, short and plump, with thinning canary yellow hair and china blue eyes, was watching an old Fred Astaire movie on a small TV.

  Then, miracle of miracles, a customer walked in.

  He was a Sarkanger, a weasel-headed alien from Sarkan II. He was dressed in a white lounge suit and carried an expensive briefcase.

  “I have a planet that needs exterminating,” the Sarkanger said.

  “You’ve come to the right place,” Arnold said. “What seems to be the matter?”

  “It’s the Meegs,” the Sarkanger told him. “We tolerated them as long as they stayed in their burrows. But now they are attacking our saunicus and something must be done.”

  “What are these Meegs?” Gregor asked.

  “They are small, ugly creatures of low intelligence with long claws and matted fur.”

  “And what is saunicus?”

  “The saunicus is a leafy green vegetable not unlike your terrestrial cabbage. It is the sole diet of the Sarkangers.”

  “And now the Meegs are eating your vegetables?”

  “Not eating them. Mutilating them. Wantonly destroying them.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Who can understand why a Meeg does anything?”

  “True enough,” Arnold said, laughing. “Yes sir, that’s certainly true! Well, sir, I think we can help you. There’s really only one problem.”

  Gregor gave his partner a look of alarm.

  “The question is,” Arnold said, “whether we can fit you into our schedule.”

  He opened his appointment book. The pages were crowded with names and dates which Arnold had written in hoping for just such a chance as this.

  “That’s a bit of luck,” he said. “We have an open slot this weekend. All we need do is arrange the fee and be on our way. I have our standard contract form right here.”

  “I have brought my own,” the Sarkanger said, taking a document from his briefcase and giving it to Arnold. “You will notice that a very substantial fee is already filled in.”

  “Why yes,” Arnold said, signing with a flourish, “I did notice that.”

  Gregor studied the paper. “You’ve also doubled the penalty clause in case of failure to complete our work.”

  “That’s why I made the fee so substantial,” the Sarkanger said. “We need results now, before the end of the planting season.”

  Gregor didn’t like it. But his partner gave him a hard look compounded of unpaid bills and overdue bank loans. With reluctance Gregor scribbled his signature.

  Four days later their ship popped out of subspace in the vicinity of the red dwarf star Sarkan. A few hours later they had landed on Sarkan II, home of the Sarkangers and their pests, the Meegs.

  There was no one to greet them at Sarkan’s largest city, Sulkers. The entire population had gone to the satellite Ulvis Minor for a vacation, at considerable expense despite mass bookings, to wait in gaily colored cabanas until their planet was cleansed.

  The partners toured Sulkers and were unimpressed by the mud wall architecture. They set up their base camp outside of the city, on the edge of a saunicus field. Just as the Sarkanger had told them, many of the cabbages had been rended, ripped, slashed, filleted, and generally messed about.

  They would begin exterminating in the morning. Arnold had discovered that Meegs were susceptible to papayin, an enzyme of the papaya plant. Exposed to concentrations as low as twenty parts in a million, Meegs went into a coma from which they could be revived only by the immediate application of cold compresses. It was not a bad way to go when you consider the many less pleasant ways the galaxy has for killing people. They had brought a sufficient supply of canned, fresh, frozen, and desiccated papayas to wipe out several planetfuls of Meegs.

  They set up tents and deck chairs, built a campfire, and watched Sarkan’s red dwarf sun sink into a sculptured frieze of sunset clouds.

  They had just finished a dinner of reconstituted chili and beans when they heard a rustling sound in the bushes nearby. A small creature stepped out cautiously. It was about the size and shape of a cat, with thick orange-brown fur.

  Gregor said to Arnold, “Do you think that might be a Meeg?”

  The creature said, “Of course I am a Meeg. And you gentlemen are the AAA Ace Decontamination Service?”

  “That is correct,” Gregor said.

  “Wonderful! Then you’ve come about the Sarkangers!”

  “Not exactly,” Arnold said.

  “You mean you
didn’t get our letter? I knew we should have sent it spacemail special delivery . . . But why are you here?”

  “This is a little embarrassing,” Gregor said. “We didn’t know you Meegs spoke English.”

  “Not all of us do,” the Meeg said. “But I happen to be a graduate of your Cornell University.”

  “Look,” Gregor said, “the fact is, a Sarkanger came to our office a few days ago and paid us to rid his planet of vermin.”

  “Vermin?” the Meeg said. “What was he referring to?”

  “You,” Arnold said.

  “Me? Us? Vermin? A Sarkanger called us that? I know we’ve had our disagreements, but that’s carrying matters a bit too far. And he paid you to kill us? And you took his money?”

  “Frankly,” Arnold said, “we had expected Meegs to be more—rudimentary. More verminlike, if you know what I mean.”

  “But this is preposterous!” the Meeg cried. “They are the vermin! We are civilized!”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Gregor said. “What about the way you tear apart saunicus?”

  “You should not comment ignorantly on the religious practices of an alien people.”

  “What’s religious about rending cabbage?” Arnold demanded.

  “It’s not the act itself,” the Meeg explained. “It’s the meaning attached to it. Ever since Meeg Gh’tan, known as the Great Feline, discovered supreme enlightenment in the simple act of shredding cabbage, we his followers reenact the rite every year.”

  “But you tear apart the Sarkangers’ cabbages,” Gregor pointed out. “Why not tear apart your own?”

  “The Sarkangers refuse to let us cultivate the saunicus because of some silly religion they have. Of course we’d prefer to tear apart our own cabbages. Wouldn’t anyone?”

  “The Sarkangers didn’t mention that,” Arnold said.

  “Puts matters in a different light, doesn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t change the fact that we have a contract with the Sarkangers.”

  “A contract for murder!”

  “I understand how you feel,” Arnold said, “and I do sympathize. But you see, if we don’t fulfill our contract, it will mean bankruptcy for us. That’s a kind of death, too, you know.”