Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Perhaps not,” I replied, “but in any event I know a trick worth two of that.”

  By mid-morning the next day we were on our way again. The sky had cleared and the rain had stopped. The sun was up and it promised to be another hot day. We came down to the main road without difficulty. When we reached the blockage that had stopped us last night, we found that a team of peasants were clearing the landslide, and a policeman was directing traffic around the remaining debris. We were on our way to Budapest, and Italy after that.

  Our moods had lifted considerably. We didn’t even talk about last night. Except for Silviu, who said, “That innkeeper, Florin, was a strange fellow with his far-fetched theories. But harmless, I think. Probably just trying to keep us amused.”

  I nodded, but I was thinking along quite different lines. Florin the innkeeper with his talk of Vaihinger and Chesterton and his theory of the ever-changing invisible world of spirits—what fools he must have taken us for! How he must have enjoyed the malice of his suggestions! I could see him now, chuckling in his warm sitting room, drinking plum brandy, warming to its glow as he thought about how his vile insinuations would fester in us, releasing their poisons, spreading their insidious rot, like spores growing and festering in the dark places of our minds, until, months or years later, when we had forgotten their source, they would bear fruit and burst, and one day I would senselessly strangle Helene in her sleep, or, if the suggestion worked in her first, she would poison me during an apparently eventless evening over dinner, between the soup and the appetizer.

  Helene was not going to get me, however. Back in our villa on the Lido, before the spiritual poison had a chance to make her dangerous, action could be taken that would make her death seem natural.

  As for Silviu, Giulio and Gina, they would have to take their chances. I would make it a point never to see them again. Just to be on the safe side. But as for Florin, the innkeeper—the source of the contagion—I had my own plans for him.

  Oh yes, my friend, I thought. Enjoy yourself in your snug sitting room, chucking over the catastrophes that will befall those who come your way. But soon I’ll return—to retrieve my shaving case, and my straight razor, which I so carefully hid in the little space between the bath tub and the wall—and then I’ll show you I know a trick worth two of that.

  MIRROR GAMES

  The mirror reflects, but it also reverses. Robert Sheckley’s new story has several interesting twists and turns of its own . . .

  EDWARDS WAS THE ONLY tourist off the cruise space ship. This was neither the year nor the season for Alcenor. Trendy people went to the Rim Worlds. Those with a taste for adventure tried out Hotar or Leni, primitive planets with plenty of flora and fauna and little or no civilization. Food lovers went to Gastor IV, where skilled chefs turn the local produce into delicious concoctions. Lovers went to the twin moons of Askenai. Only those crazed by loss and grief went to Alcenor.

  After he cleared customs and immigration at Alcenor, Edwards saw, in the Hall of Arrivals, gigantic mirrors showing typical sights from some of Alcenor’s tourist zones. There was Roppo, an island in the south Sclemerian Sea, green and lush and famous for its white sand beaches, its many restaurants, and its underwater grottoes, where, in scuba gear, you could meet the Osculti, an intelligent underwater race long resident on the planet. You might even take tea with them in a watery interzone, since the Osculti are famous for their hospitality.

  This was not what Edwards had come for, however. He was not here to sightsee, not until and unless he could do so with Elena. But Elena was dead, and all that remained of her was her image, captured in the old hand mirror that she had been looking into just before death came to her suddenly, that last day of her life on Earth.

  On Earth, death is irrevocable. But in Alcenor, Edwards had been told, it was sometimes reversible—especially if a mirror had been involved at the time of passing. You couldn’t return to your body: but you could pass into a mirror, there to live indefinitely.

  The people of Alcenor were the great scientists of mirrors, and unusual effects were possible with mirrors here. This was due to the somewhat different properties of matter locally, to say nothing of a slightly different space-time setup.

  Others have written extensively about these matters. Edwards had only a layman’s interest . . . No, not even that. All he wanted was his Elena back, or to rejoin her, and he didn’t care how the thing was managed. Science or magic, it mattered not to him as long as he got the result he sought.

  It was inevitable that he met Lobo immediately after clearing customs. Lobo was loitering in the hall of arrivals, a tall, sandy-haired young man with the look of a street arab. He was there to meet new arrivals, find them hotel rooms, recommend restaurants, and suggest other services.

  Spotting the tags on his luggage, Lobo came up to Edwards, and addressed him with the jaunty insouciance of his breed.

  “You want a woman, am I right? Sir, you’ve come to the right planet and the gods of fortune have steered you to the right man, for I have respectful contact with many ladies of surprising loveliness and unassailable virtue. The particular one I have in mind for you, honored sir, has secondary sexual characteristics of a universally approved type and has been saving herself for an Earthman of a certain right sort, exactly which sort to be left up to my own judgment. In my view, sir, you are that man. There is no money involved in this, though you might like to buy the lady a nice dinner at a reasonable price, perhaps a bedroom banquet as we call it, catered by my cousin, Tomas of The Frying Pan—”

  Edwards had been waiting for a break in this non-stop flow of specious sounding verbiage. Now, disregarding manners, he broke in anyhow.

  “No, no, no!” he said. “I do not want a woman!”

  Lobo raised sandy eyebrows. “A boy? Or perhaps a creature of an entirely different species from your own? We have a guest race here in Alcenor who are famed for their pulchritude, even though it does take some getting used to . . .”

  “I’m not interested!” Edwards cried. “I only want my Elena!”

  Trying to understand, Lobo said, “This Elena—did you by chance bring her with you?”

  Edwards nodded. He opened his backpack and took out a large narrow leather case, zipped it open and showed, nesting in it, a small silver-backed mirror.

  “I have her here,” Edwards said. “This is what she looked at last.”

  Lobo nodded in instant comprehension. “So she still lives in the mirror!”

  “Not on Earth,” Edwards said. “But perhaps here in Alcenor—”

  “On Alcenor,” Lobo said, “anything is possible—as long as it involves mirrors.”

  “So I have heard,” Edwards said.

  “As it turns out, I can help you,” Lobo said. “You are very lucky to have met me.”

  “You can bring her back to life yourself?”

  “No. But I know someone who can.”

  Edwards took a room for a week in a smart but modestly priced hotel recommended by Lobo. Once alone in his room, he unpacked, propped the mirror up at the dressing table, and sat down to write a letter to Elena.

  He told her that he had never realized how lonely life could be without her, how unsatisfying, how bleak. He said that he knew he hadn’t always been good toward her, and, especially toward the end, had been impatient, insulting, even violent. All that was over now, he assured her. It had been a temporary madness, brought on by too much love, not a deficiency of it. As proof, she should consider the steps he was taking to rejoin her. He ended by writing that he had every expectation of meeting her again very soon.

  The letter completed, he held it up to the mirror, waiting until he was sure the mirror had absorbed it. Then he carefully packed away the letter and the mirror, and went to bed.

  Finally Lobo came to him. “I have the perfect person! Come, we need to talk to her at once, before she leaves town again.”

  “Where is she going that’s so important?”

  “Mirrors in different p
arts of our planet have different properties. Elia has vowed to study them all, to penetrate to the deepest secrets of mirrors, to bring out the full properties of mirrors whether by the white light of science or the black light of mysticism.”

  THE NEXT DAY, Lobo brought him to meet Elia, a witch woman skilled in all aspects of mirrors. Elia lived alone in furnished rooms in one of the poorer quarters that had sprung up around the spaceport. She was a tall, grave woman. She listened to Edwards’s request, examined the mirror, and said she thought something could be done. Elena could not be resuscitated from the mirror. That was beyond the present abilities of anyone on Alcenor. But Edwards could, with suitable preparation, enter the mirror himself, and, living, rejoin the living Elena.

  There would be a charge in money, of course, payable in advance; and another, perhaps graver cost in that he would have to give up his current, corporeal life, which would cease the moment he entered the mirror.

  Edward said he was well content. Elia said she needed to do some work on the mirror, to peel off some of the images that had accumulated on it since Elena’s death, so as to facilitate Edwards’s passage.

  The next day, Lobo came around to see how Elia was doing.

  “So how is it going?” Lobo asked.

  “All right. A few of the images are a little tenacious. I’m having difficulty peeling them away. Nothing I can’t handle, however. But this whole thing is a little puzzling.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “This woman, this Elena—you say he loves her very much?”

  “Very much! That is why he has come all the way to Alcenor—to be with her again.”

  “That’s what I thought. It’s the puzzling part.”

  “Could you explain further?”

  “If he loves her so much,” Elia said. “Why did he kill her?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “His image is right there in the mirror with hers. It’s the last image made on Earth. It shows Edwards strangling her.”

  “You are sure of this?”

  “You can see for yourself. I have set up the image in a copy mirror.”

  “No, don’t bother showing me. I take your word for it.”

  “And what about the other man?”

  “I know nothing about another man.”

  “There is another man in the mirror,” Elia said. “From the scenes I have peeled, she appears to have loved him, too.”

  “Damnation! What happened to the other man?”

  “He appears to have been killed, too. Someone shot him with a handgun.”

  “Who?”

  “Our client, Edwards, I suppose. But the mirror does not reveal this. This other man is in the mirror, too.”

  “Well . . . It is none of our business.”

  “I agree. Edwards is our client, and we are neither the police nor the moral authorities. There is perhaps a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened. But I shall have to ask him a few questions.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “First, to ascertain whether, in light of what I have seen, he still wants to go into the mirror. And secondly, to secure our payment before he does so.”

  “You said yourself we are not the moral authorities.”

  “It presents a personal moral problem. You should never have brought this man here!”

  “You told me to bring customers. You yourself advised me to work the spaceport.”

  “But I thought you would use a little discretion, a little judgment.”

  “What does it matter what you thought? You and I wanted income, and we have it now.”

  “But also a problem.”

  “Consider the problem the price you pay for the income.”

  “And what about my moral dilemma?”

  “If it bothers you so badly, you can always tell him to go away.”

  “No, I can’t do that, either. I am bound by the vows to my profession to continue this thing once I have accepted the assignment. I shall have to take it up with Edwards.”

  “Saw that, did you?” Edwards said after Elia told him what she had seen in the mirror. “Well, it was all a misunderstanding. I never meant to hurt Elena. I love her! It’s just that I have a violent temper. But I have it under control now. When I see her, I can explain everything. She will understand. She has always understood me, always loved me.”

  “So you still want to go into the mirror to join her?”

  “More than ever!”

  “And it makes no difference that there is another man there?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw another man in the mirror. A man who had died violently.”

  “Yes, of course. That would be Rodgers.”

  “And he presents no problem for you?”

  “Rodgers was a mistake,” Edwards said.

  Elia nodded.

  “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. In Elena’s apartment, I mean. Pestering her. Confusing her. If he had gone quietly away, as I told him to, all that unpleasantness could have been avoided.”

  “But he did not go away.”

  “No, he did not. He said he loved her. And the silly girl thought for a while she was in love with him.” Edwards laughed. “As if she could ever love anyone but me! We were made for each other, Elena and I, and we both said so, back in the wonderful days at the start of our relationship.”

  “I see,” Elia said.

  “I told her then that I was a serious person. I was a person who loved once and forever. I told her I would always love her, in this world and in the next. I didn’t know about mirrors then, but of course I meant in any mirror world, too. She said she loved me the same way. But time passed, there was the matter of my violence, there was Rodgers with his blandishments, and she became confused.”

  “I understand,” Elia said. “But do you think that now, especially in light of you having killed her, that her feelings for you will be the same?”

  “I am sure of it. If she had killed me, I would forgive her and continue to love her. I can expect no less of her.”

  “Your love is very noble,” Elia said. “But what about this Rodgers? Will not his being there prove an impediment?”

  “An unimportant one,” Edwards said. “I killed him once. If necessary, I’ll do it again. Nothing will stand in the way of my love!”

  “I think I understand it all now,” Elia said.

  Edwards got to his feet. He was a very large man. The expression on his face was not pleasant as he said, “You are going to put me into the mirror, aren’t you?”

  “There is no doubt of that,” Elia said. “There is merely the matter of payment to take care of first.”

  Edwards pulled out his billfold and began to lay out large denomination bills in Alcensor currency. After a while, Elia held up her hand. “That is enough.”

  “I can give more.”

  “No. This is quite enough. We will put you into the mirror this evening, after I have made a few final arrangements.”

  “You won’t disappoint me now?” Edwards said.

  “You will not be disappointed.”

  THAT EVENING, in front of the mirror, Edwards followed Elia’s instructions and felt his body collapse behind him. He had a moment of panic as his life seemed to slide away. Then he was in the mirror.

  The first thing he noted was that he still seemed to be in his body. He grasped his forearm. He could feel himself, he was solid, real. Perhaps he was only an image now, but to himself and to other images he was real. He looked around. He remembered this room. It was the room in which he had seen Elena for the last time, back on Earth. And now he would see her again. He turned quickly—He had caught a glimpse of someone—Elena! Yes, it was her!

  She was standing in a mirrored doorway, and she was smiling at him.

  “Elena, darling,” he said. “I’m so sorry I killed you. Believe me, it won’t happen again.”

  She was still smiling, but she didn’t answ
er. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He walked toward her. There she was, just inside a mirrored doorway. He passed through the doorway himself. “Elena?”

  She was just a little ahead of him. He passed through another doorway, and another beyond that. There seemed to be a lot of doorways around here, and standing in each of them was Elena, smiling at him.

  “Playing games with me?” he asked. “Never mind, there are a lot of doors here, but I have a lot of time. I will find you, my darling, I promise you that.” He moved on, following Elena’s image, into the deeper complications of the maze.

  Afterward, Lobo asked Elia how she knew Edwards would go into the mirror maze, the small mirrored box with its endless reflected passageways that she had put into view on a small table behind Edwards.

  “I baited it,” Elia said. “With this.” She showed him a small mirror. Lobo looked at the image of a beautiful young girl.

  “She was younger then,” Elia said. “This image must be from before she met Edwards. I pulled this from the mirror.”

  “You put that image in the maze?”

  “Precisely. I couldn’t leave Edwards in the mirror to terrorize those two young people.”

  Lobo considered, watching the tiny figure of Edwards moving through the mirrored rooms. “Can he ever get out?”

  Elia shook her head. “A true mirror maze has an entrance but no exit.”

  Lobo whistled softly to himself. “So he is to wander there forever.”

  “Or until something finds him.”

  Lobo looked at her quizzically.

  “Mirror mazes are uncanny places. They can generate the unexpected. But even wandering in a maze cannot go on forever.”

  “But what if Elena and the other man go into the maze themselves?”

  “Against some eventualities there is no prevention. If either or both of them go into the maze, we can only say they will get what is coming to them.”

  “You play rough,” Lobo said, a note of admiration in his voice.

  “Rough but fair. And now, my young friend, it is time to split the money.”