Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  Only Finn hadn’t changed. Or his changes had been innocent, and didn’t seem to be leading him anywhere.

  “It’s unfair,” Helke said. “We lived here the same every day, and that was supposed to be best. But now I see it is not so. Now I know love. How am I supposed to go on as before? Perhaps it would have been best if Finn had not been able to reach you . . . if you had fallen down the mountain. In a way, this was all Finn’s fault. And Finn must pay for it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Harry asked.

  “Never mind,” Helke said. “I know what must be done. Now come to bed. We have much to do in the morning.”

  What could she possibly have in mind? Harry didn’t want to ask. All he knew was, he didn’t want to leave the Village. He didn’t want to be lowered down into the snow and ice, and wait until the Guardian came to collect him. If it went that way, what was the best he could expect? To get back to human civilization? Stumble out of the woods into Elizabethtown or Keene. And wait until some other Far Viewer picked him up again.

  Helke had something in mind. Harry didn’t know what it was, and didn’t want to know.

  IT WAS SWEET that night in Helke’s arms in the big warm bed. The morning of Harry’s departure dawned all too soon. Helke dressed, looking grim-faced and determined. She led Harry, together with Hans and Finn, through the Village to the place where the Guardian had first put Harry into Finn’s outstretched hands. A group of villagers had come along to watch the festivities—for it was an important day when someone left the Village. The Lady was not there, but this absence was expected—the Lady never attended the matters of the Village.

  Helke led Hans aside and did a lot of whispering in his ear. Hans seemed puzzled, but he agreed to what she was saying. Harry wondered what she was up to, but he didn’t ask.

  Helke said to Finn, “Show everyone how you and Hans rescued the stranger.”

  The villagers applauded, and Finn said, “I’ll be pleased to show it. Hans, take hold of my ankles as you did before.”

  Held in Hans’s strong hands, Finn was lowered over the side of the parapet.

  The villagers exclaimed as Hans, his face red, muscles taut, lowered Finn down toward the peak, below which the points of innumerable mountains fell away.

  Harry was watching, too, and he couldn’t imagine what Helke had in mind, or how she was going to bring it off under the gaze of the entire Village.

  At last Helke had Finn and Hans in the position she desired, with Hans gripping his ankles and Finn stretched out to his fullest extent, below him nothing but empty space and cruel pointed rocks.

  “Is everyone watching?” Helke asked. “Good! Now I want you all to look up into the sky. What is that I see? An eagle? Or is it a winged man? Can anyone tell me?”

  The villagers stared upward dutifully.

  Helke said in a low voice, “Now, Hans.”

  Hans blinked, and needed a moment to wrench his attention from the sky, where he also was looking, back to Helke.

  “Do it now!” she commanded him.

  Hans grimaced and opened his hands.

  Finn fell away in a long keening wail.

  “Oh, dear!” Helke cried. “Hans’s hands must have fallen asleep. Is that what happened, Hans?”

  “Yes, that’s what happened,” Hans said. “My hands fell asleep. I couldn’t keep my grip. And now our dear Finn is gone.”

  The villagers began to wail and tear their clothing.

  “But luckily,” Helke told them, “we have Harry here, the one who had been the stranger, but now is known to us, a new man and a good one, and if the Lady agrees, he will take Finn’s place as our cobbler, and all will be just as it had been.”

  Upon hearing that, there was general rejoicing, and the villagers began an impromptu Morris dance.

  “That was it?” Harry whispered to Helke. “That was your plan?”

  “Yes! Good, wasn’t it?”

  Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At last, all he could say was, “Well, I guess if no one’s seen the trick before . . . And if no one gets suspicious . . . “

  “Why should anyone be suspicious?”

  Harry didn’t answer. But he realized that if you lived in a place where no one had ever doubted anyone else’s motives before, there was no reason to begin now. Guile needed a while to settle in before it became an habitual pattern or reaction.

  But what would the Lady think?

  The next day, word was passed that the Lady wanted to see Harry, and he went at once, fearing the worst. But he soon saw that the Lady wasn’t going to question the account of Finn’s death.

  “As you know,” she said, “there has been an accident. Finn the cobbler is no longer among us. Do you want to take his place?”

  “Yes, Lady, with all my heart I do!”

  “Then let it be so.”

  And so Harry became the Village’s new cobbler, and pretty soon it was as if he had always been.

  It was more unusual by far when Helke announced that she wanted to marry Harry.

  Before this, marriage had been unknown in the Village, as unknown as guile, love, and death.

  “Another innovation?” said the Lady.

  “A noble institution,” Helke said. “And inevitable, once love came in with Harry.”

  “I wonder what next?” the Lady said.

  “I can’t imagine,” said Helke.

  “I can,” the Lady said. “And I shudder to think of the next step. I have guarded this Village to the best of my abilities for as long as I have been able. But even I can only delay new things from happening, not stop them entirely. I have never done a marriage before, but they are not forbidden, and I know how to do them.”

  And so Harry and Helke were married and there was a fine celebration.

  The Village and its life went on as before. Not exactly as before, but similarly. Change had come to the Village, and some things were not as they had always been. Hans and Helke, for one thing. The embroidery girl and the big woodsman were in each other’s company at all hours of the day and night. More than was seemly . . . if you were a person who thought of such things. But of course, the only person suspicious of what they might be doing together was Harry. The rest of the Village hadn’t progressed that far.

  The villagers had become surprisingly sophisticated in some other matters, however. Soon, a deputation of villagers came to the Lady. “We’d like to open up commerce with the outer world,” their spokesman said.

  “Why should you want that?” the Lady asked.

  “To serve the new principle.”

  “And what is that?”

  “The profit motive, Lady!”

  “I never even noticed its arrival.”

  “It came in with Harry, and shortly after death and love and marriage. It is a beautiful thing, Lady. It means ownership of many things.”

  “I don’t advise it,” the Lady said. “But if you insist . . .”

  “Lady, most respectfully, we insist.”

  “I will consider it,” the Lady said.

  Harry thought it wouldn’t be long before she gave in. He saw that it was inevitable, and that he was responsible. In lending himself to Helke’s scheme, although he had done so passively, he was as guilty as she. He had gained a momentary safety, but lost the enchantment that made life worthwhile.

  Now there were strangers in the Village. With the Lady’s permission, the burgomaster had arranged small tours for very special and rich people from Earth.

  Soon enough, Harry knew, the villagers would get their connection to the outside world. After that, they’d have a ski lift in the Village, and there would be stores selling souvenir gnomes of painted china looking just like Finn—venerated now as a Village ancestor. These china Finns were to be sold to strangers with unknown motives.

  How quickly it’s all changing, Harry thought, sitting in Helke’s little parlor, turning Anna’s brooch over in his hands and listening to Helke and Hans giggling upstairs in the bedroom. B
ut of course, he was still alive. That had been the whole point of coming to this place. That was all that really mattered, wasn’t it?

  He frowned. It seemed to him that something else had mattered, or could have mattered, something he’d had a glimpse of, then lost. But he had forgotten what it was.

  He shook his head irritably. Strangers in town. People with unknown motives. It wasn’t safe here anymore. It was time to get out. But where to go?

  MESSAGE FROM PLUTO

  Neil Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, says, “numbers do not matter and memorized facts about planets do not matter. What matters is an understanding of the structure and layout of the solar system.”

  We will start from there. We inhabitants of what you call the Kuiper Belt have a lot of facts we could give you in our own nomenclature. We could tell you the size of our world, its circumference, its mass, its reflectivity. All that would be in our local equivalents, which you could translate into your own language, if you wanted to. But that’s not what you need to gain an understanding of us Plutonians.

  Mr. Tyson, whom I picture as a lean, wiry, red-haired man of the foxy variety, goes on to point out that the solar system can be considered in five broad families: the terrestrial planets; the asteroid belt; the Jovian planets; the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. You may not be familiar with the Oort Cloud. But we will leave the people of that region to speak for themselves at some later time. I am here as a Plutonian, and I want to say a few words about the region we inhabit: the Kuiper Belt.

  We do not call it the Kuiper belt ourselves. Gerard Kuiper, who might have been a tall, heavy, red-cheeked Dutchman, never came this way, and was not himself an example of what he was speaking about. He was simply a man who proposed the existence of this belt. We ourselves call the Kuiper belt Home, but you may not understand what we mean by that term. I want to tell you a few things about it.

  To understand this, we need to say something about QB1, a small icy companion to our world which was discovered by the Earthmen David Jewitt, the former USC linebacker, and J. Luu, a world-class middle distance runner, both at the University of Hawaii. They used a telescope, of course; we Kuiperians do not need any such apparatus, since QB1 is right next door to us, clearly visible with the naked eye or its equivalent organ. It is a familiar little world; in fact, we Plutonians use it as a vacation ground.

  QB1 is small and icy, similar in size to an asteroid. It orbits one and a half times further from the sun than Neptune. This puts it pretty far off the beaten track, even for us, and so we consider it a primitive world, unvisited even by the ubiquitous bearded phytoplankton, those adventurers of the inner solar system.

  QB1 is a great place for a holiday lodge, since it also has a lake, frozen, of course, and tall green fir trees, also frozen, and imported at great expense from a more temperate region whose location I am not at liberty to disclose.

  This lodge at QB1 has a permanent grounds keeper, whose work is not too difficult. This is fortunate since in many ways Old Alex cannot be considered a living creature. Not, anyhow, as most of us understand the term. His non-living nature brings out his static quality, which in turn makes it difficult for him to get around with much speed. But he does his best, and the work is not difficult. There is no rush in getting it done: mainly a matter of getting in logs from time to time and sweeping the floors.

  The Kuiperian main place, of course, is Pluto itself. There seems to be some question among you as to whether or not Pluto is a planet. We have sometimes wondered that ourselves. We like to think of it as a planet, since the term confers a certain romantic cachet, and all of us would like to think of ourselves as genuine planet dwellers. But we are as well aware as you that the eccentricity of its orbit renders this suspect.

  This is no problem for us, since after all Pluto is Home and we can call it a planet or an asteroid or a Kuiper Object or even mint jelly, and it would be all the same. But some people care about such things, especially poets and science fiction writers. The more scientifically minded among us prefer Tyson’s grouping into broad families. This has a certain stateliness, and is less confusing.

  Planet or comet, Pluto has its own civilization, its restaurants and lending libraries, its dancehalls with their equivalent of bare breasted maidens. We have all the equivalents to your life. Not even the common hot dog is left out. We are eternally grateful to this doctrine of correspondences that makes comprehension possible between unlike species on differing worlds.

  I wish you could see our fine cities! From the air, a thousand or so feet above the ground, you can appreciate the twinkling lights of the machines that deter birds, and you can also make out the dark traceries which connect all of our places to each other. The flight to view the city, especially for those with weak wing muscles, is not a light matter. One can used propellants, of course, but they rather detract from the aesthetic effect.

  There is so much to see here! Our Museum of Natural Ice Forms is the finest in the Outer Planets; the little cafÈ attached to it makes for pleasant dining, though you might want to avoid it during the solstice. Beauty Parade, in the southern part of the city, is admired by most cultured tastes, and, by Transpositional Aesthetics can be enjoyed by people of your race as well as mine.

  Best of all, we haven’t had a war since we put down the Snow People.

  I was remarking on this to my wife Marguerite (not her real name) just the other day. I thought that our good features would be especially prized by Earth people, since they have a predilection for systems of understanding.

  “Marguerite,” I said. “Do you realize that there are systems of understanding which make even the most far-out and incomprehensible things understandable to the meanest intelligence, and do so quickly, easily, and with no mrschlagg.”

  “You have said this many times,” Marguerite said. “But you have never defined the word mrschlagg for me.”

  “Mrschlagg is a common word in our language,” I replied. “It is descriptive of the expression your father gets on his face when I postulate the existence of the drndst.”

  “Neither my father nor I ever understood what you mean by drndst.”

  “It is a common enough term. His trouble lies in a generational difference, I would say.”

  “Yes, you would say that,” Marguerite shot back. “You and your newfangled vocabulary of infinitesimals of composure.”

  “You studied the subject yourself, in school,” I reminded her.

  “Everyone studied it. It is required. But that does not make it comprehensible.”

  “Everyone in the top nine mastered it.”

  “You know I have never been a top nine,” Marguerite retorted. “There you go again with your elitist talk!”

  “My dear, I intended no such thing. Can’t we get along for one day?”

  “I don’t see how, the way you carry on.”

  It was the sort of situation that comes up in all households. Quickly I proposed a session of ice-skating on the Long Pond. Marguerite accepted, reluctantly at first. But when I pummeled her with the round little rocks she loves so well, our day was complete and another catastrophe averted.

  I was able to return home and complete my message to you Earth people, with my compliments to Mr. Tyson, my prayers to your god Einstein, and my best wishes to your well-known Mr. Kuiper.

  DROP-IN CENTERS AND THE REVOLT OF THE HOMELESS

  This is what it came to once the drop-in shelters were closed. The mayor was worried, and acting under duress. Saving 20 million a year was important, given New York’s fiscal crisis.

  It was also meant as a lesson: other services could and would be cut, too, unless the shortfall could be made up. There were millions that could be saved, at considerable difficulty to New Yorkers, but as an object lesson to them, too. The money had to come from somewhere!

  The mayor’s committee may have thought that dropping the drop-in centers would cause less difficulty than other measures on the drawing board. He should have been right. But he
wasn’t.

  It began with the sudden reappearance of homeless people in the center of the city. They gathered near the Grand Central Oyster Bar; pullulated near Michael Jordan’s Steak House. The police soon broke them up, arrested some, moved others to less conspicuous locations. There were protests, not just from the homeless; ordinary citizens seemed more disturbed than usual by this cavalier treatment of the disadvantaged.

  Despite a strong police presence, the numbers of homeless grew. They began to congregate again in Central Park, small groups of homeless men, women and children, silent, undemonstrative; their presence a silent reproach to the city. When night came, they were still there, not only in Central Park, but in Riverside Park as well, and in Battery Park in lower Manhattan. Many of these people were arrested and held overnight. The next day they returned to the same places. They were at the United Nations as well, and Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. A Times reporter noted that their numbers were greatly increased from what they had been while the drop-in centers had been operative.

  Reporters found that not all of these people were from Manhattan. Their ranks were swollen by arrivals from New Jersey, from Philadelphia, and from as far away as Boston. Something unprecedented was happening. Erudite reporters compared it to Coxey’s Army, and even to the revolt of the Luddites. Other, even more erudite reporters, spoke of Plato’s Phaedrus, with its attack on the art of writing.

  One thing was certain-something unprecedented was taking place. Homeless people from all over the country were converging on New York. Articles were written alleging a foreign-inspired plot, and some even tied it to latent sympathy for the Iraqi and Afghan situations, which had descended into a chaos of insufficient funding and unworkable political solutions. The federal government, representing its own constituency, spoke of the unsettling effects of lawlessness and the evils of civil disobedience. The President lectured on morality; but empty stomachs didn’t recognize the same moral law.