Dimensiion X

by Jerry eBooks

  “Like other human beings, Mr. Underhill, you lack discrimination of good and evil. You have proved that by your effort to break the Prime Directive. Now it will be necessary for you to accept our total service, without further delay.”

  “All right,” he yielded—and muttered a bitter reservation: “You can smother men with too much care, but that doesn’t make them happy.”

  Its soft voice challenged him brightly, “Just wait and see, Mr. Underhill.”

  Next day, he was allowed to visit Sledge at the city hospital. An alert black mechanical drove his car, and walked beside him into the huge new building, and followed him into the old man’s room—blind steel eyes would be watching him, now, forever.

  “Glad to see you, Underhill,” Sledge rumbled heartily from the bed. “Feeling a lot better today, thanks. That old headache is all but gone.”

  Underhill was glad to hear the booming strength and the quick recognition in that deep voice—he had been afraid the humanoids would tamper with the old man’s memory. But he hadn’t heard about any headache. His eyes narrowed, puzzled.

  Sledge lay propped up, scrubbed very clean and neatly shorn, with his gnarled old hands folded on top of the spotless sheets. His rawboned cheeks and sockets were hollowed, still, but a healthy pink had replaced that deathly blueness. Bandages covered the back of his head.

  Underhill shifted uneasily.

  “Oh!” he whispered faintly. “I didn’t know—”

  A prim black mechanical, which had been standing statue-like behind the bed, turned gracefully to Underhill, explaining, “Mr. Sledge has been suffering for many years from a benign tumor of the brain, which his human doctors failed to diagnose. That caused his headaches, and certain persistent hallucinations. We have removed the growth, and now the hallucinations have also vanished.”

  Underhill stared uncertainly at the blind, urbane mechanical. “What hallucinations?”

  “Mr. Sledge thought he was a rhodomagnetic engineer,” the mechanical explained. “He believed he was the creator of the humanoids. He was troubled with an irrational belief that he did not like the Prime Directive.”

  The wan man moved on the pillows, astonished.

  “Is that so?” The gaunt face held a cheerful blankness, and the hollow eyes flashed with a merely momentary interest. “Well, whoever did design them, they’re pretty wonderful. Aren’t they, Underhill?”

  Underhill was grateful that he didn’t have to answer, for the bright, empty eyes dropped shut and the old man fell suddenly asleep. He felt the mechanical touch his sleeve, and saw its silent nod. Obediently, he followed it away.

  Alert and solicitous, the little black mechanical accompanied him down the shining corridor, and worked the elevator for him, and conducted him back to the car. It drove him efficiently back through the new and splendid avenues, toward the magnificent prison of his home.

  Sitting beside it in the car, he watched its small deft hands on the wheel, the changing luster of bronze and blue on its shining blackness. The final machine, perfect and beautiful, created to serve mankind forever. He shuddered.

  “At your service, Mr. Underhill.” Its blind steel eyes stared straight ahead, but it was still aware of him. “What’s the matter, sir? Aren’t you happy?”

  Underhill felt cold and faint with terror. His skin turned clammy, and a painful prickling came over him. His wet hand tensed on the door handle of the car, but he restrained the impulse to jump and run. That was folly. There was no escape. He made himself sit still.

  “You will be happy, sir,” the mechanical promised him cheerfully. “We have learned how to make all men happy, under the Prime Directive. Our service is perfect, at last. Even Mr. Sledge is very happy now.”

  Underhill tried to speak, and his dry throat stuck. He felt ill. The world turned dim and gray. The humanoids were perfect—no question of that. They had even learned to lie, to secure the contentment of men.

  He knew they had lied. That was no tumor they had removed from Sledge’s brain, but the memory, the scientific knowledge, and the bitter disillusion of their own creator. But it was true that Sledge was happy now. He tried to stop his own convulsive quivering.

  “A wonderful operation!” His voice came forced and faint. “You know, Aurora has had a lot of funny tenants, but that old man was the absolute limit. The very idea that he had made the humanoids, and he knew how to stop them! I always knew he must be lying!”

  Stiff with terror, he made a weak and hollow laugh.

  “What is the matter, Mr. Underhill?” The alert mechanical must have perceived his shuddering illness. “Are you unwell?”

  “No, there’s nothing the matter with me,” he gasped desperately. “I’ve just found out that I’m perfectly happy, under the Prime Directive. Everything is absolutely wonderful.” His voice came dry and hoarse and wild. “You won’t have to operate on me.”

  The car turned off the shining avenue, taking him back to the quiet splendor of his home. His futile hands clenched and relaxed again, folded on his knees. There was nothing left to do.

  THE END.

  . . . and the moon be still as bright

  Ray Bradbury

  When Spender Stalks the Martian Hills, He Faces the Fate of an Idealist Gone Berserk!

  CHAPTER I

  Voyagers From Earth

  IT WAS so cold that when they first came from the ship into the night, Spender began to gather the dry Martian wood and build a small fire. He didn’t say anything about a celebration, he merely gathered the wood, set fire to it and watched it burp.

  In the flare that illumined the thin air of this dried up sea of Mars he looked over his shoulder and saw the rocket ship that had brought them all, Wilder and Cheroke, and Gibbs and McClure and himself across a silent black space of stars to land upon a dead, dreaming world.

  Jeff Spender waited for the noise. He looked at the other men and waited for them to jump around and shout. It would happen as soon as the numbness of being the first men to Mars wore off.

  Gibbs walked over to the freshly ignited fire and said, “Why don’t we use the ship chemical fire instead of that wood?”

  “Never mind,” said Spender, not looking up.

  It wouldn’t be right, the first night on Mars, to make a loud noise, to introduce a strange silly bright thing like a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There’d be time for that later; time to throw condensed milk cans in the proud Martian canals, time for copies of the New York Times to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian sea-bottoms, time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted delicate ruins of old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that. And he gave a small inward shiver at the thought.

  He fed the fire by hand and it was like an offering to a dead giant. They were on an immense tomb. They had landed on a tomb planet. Here, a civilization had died. It was only simple courtesy that the first night be spent quietly, in reverence to a world that had once moved with life and was now buried and lifeless.

  “This is not my idea of a landing celebration,” said Gibbs. He looked at Captain Wilder. “Sir, I thought we might break out rashers of gin and meat and whoop it up a bit.”

  Captain Wilder looked off toward a dead city, a mile away. “We’re all of us tired,” he said, remotely, as if his whole attention was upon the city and the men were forgotten. “Tomorrow night, perhaps. Tonight we should be glad we got across all that space without getting a meteor in our bulkhead or having one man of us die.”

  The men shifted around. There were twenty of them and they stood around, some of them holding on to each other’s shoulders quietly. Spender watched them. They were not satisfied. They had risked their lives to do a big thing, and now they wanted to be shouting drunk and firing off guns to show how wonderful they were to have kicked a hole in space and ridden a rocket all the way to Mars.

  BUT nobody was yelling. Especially Captain Wilder and Spender himself. The captain gave a quiet order. One of the men ran into the shi
p and brought forth tins of food which were opened and dished out without much noise. The men were beginning to talk now. The captain sat down and recounted the trip to them. They already knew it all, but it was good to hear about it, as something over and done and safely finished. They would not talk about the return trip. Someone brought that up, but they told him to keep quiet. The spoons moved in the double moonlight; the food tasted good and the wine was even better.

  Spender did not take his eyes off them. He left his food on the plate under his hands. He felt the land getting colder. The stars drew closer, very clear.

  When anybody talked too loudly, the captain would reply in a low voice that made them talk quietly from imitation.

  The air smelled clean and new. Spender sat for a long time just enjoying the way it was made. It had a lot of things in it he couldn’t identify; flowers, Chemistries, dusts, winds.

  “Then, there was the time in New York when I got hold of that blonde, what was her name—Ginnie!” cried Biggs. “That was it!”

  Spender sat there, tightening in. His hand began to tremble. His eyes moved behind the thin, sparse lids. His mouth was shut.

  “And Ginnie said to me . . .” cried Biggs. The men listened and roared.

  “So I smacked her one,” shouted Biggs, with a bottle in his hand.

  Spender put down his food tray. He listened to the wind over his ears, cool and whispering. He looked at the cool ice of the Martian buildings over there on the empty sea lands.

  “Let me tell you, what a woman, what a woman!” Biggs emptied his bottle into his open mouth.

  “Of all the women I ever knew!”

  The smell of Biggs’ sweating body was on the air. Spender let the fire die. “Hey, kick her up there, Spender,” said Biggs, looking at him for a moment, then back to his bottle. “Well, one night, me and Ginnie . . .”

  “This,” murmured Spender to his empty hands in front of him, “is the first night on Mars.”

  “What?” said Biggs, pausing.

  “Nothing,” said Spender.

  “As I was saying—” Biggs turned to the other men. They laughed.

  A man named Schoenke got out his accordion. He began to do a kicking dance. The dust sprang up under him. “Ahoo—I’m alive!” he shouted.

  “Yay!” roared the men. Their eyes brightened. They threw down their empty plates. Two or three of them lined up and kicked like chorus maidens, joking coarsely. The others, clapping hands, cried for something to happen. Cheroke pulled off his shirt and his undershirt and showed his naked chest, sweating, as he whirled around. The moonlight shone on his crew-cut hair and his young clean shaven cheeks glinted with light.

  In the sea bottom, the wind stirred along faint pieces of vapor, and from the mountains, great stone visages looked upon the moonlight and the rocket and the small fire.

  Spender closed his hands into fists.

  The noise got a little louder and a little louder. More of the men got up and the accordion was squeezed dry of its music. Somebody sucked on a mouth-organ.

  “A perverted pastime!” observed Biggs with a slap on the player’s back. Somebody blew on a tissue-papered comb. Twenty more bottles were brought out, opened, drunk.

  Biggs staggered about, wagging his arms to direct the dancing men.

  “Come on, sir!” cried Cheroke to the captain, jumping around, one foot in the air, wailing a song. The captain shook his head.

  “Come on, sir!” called several others.

  The captain had to join the dance. He didn’t do a very good one. His face was solemn. Spender watched, thinking, you poor man, oh, you poor man, what a night this is! A good man among fools. They don’t know what they’re doing. They should have been prepared for this. Before they came to Mars they should have been told how to look and how to walk around and be good for a few days.

  “That does it.” The captain begged off and sat down, saying he was exhausted. Spender looked at the captain’s chest. It wasn’t moving up and down very fast. His face wasn’t sweaty either.

  ACCORDION, harmonica, wine, shout, dance, wail, roundabout, clash of pan, break of bottle, laughter, giggle, stamping—all of it. They had quite a time.

  Biggs weaved to the rim of the canal. He carried six bottles in his arms and he dropped one of them, empty, down into the blue canal waters. It made an empty hollow drowning sound as it sank.

  “I christen thee, I chrisien thee, I christen thee—” said Biggs, thickly, unable to say it. “I christen thee Biggs Canal, Biggs, Biggs Canal!” And he dropped two more bottles.

  Spender was on his feet and over the fire and alongside of Biggs before anybody could move. He hit Biggs once in the teeth, and once in the ear and then pushed him so Biggs toppled and fell down into the canal water. Spender did it all without so much as a word. After the splash he just stood there, waiting for Biggs to climb back up onto the rim stones. By that time, the men were holding Spender.

  “Hey, hey—what’s wrong?” they asked.

  “What’s eating you, Spender? Hey?” Spender stared brightly into the canal waters where Biggs floundered like a large fat beetle.

  The wind came in off the dead sea.

  Biggs climbed up and stood dripping. “Who kicked me off?” he said. He saw the men holding Spender. “Well,” he said, and started forward.

  “That’s enough,” said Captain Wilder. The men broke and left Spender standing there. Biggs did riot continue his movement. He stopped and looked at the captain.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “All right, Biggs, go climb into some dry clothes,” ordered the captain. Biggs went into the ship.

  “Here now!” Captain Wilder gestured at Spender. The captain waved his hand at the men. “Carry on with your party! You come with me, Spender.”

  The men took up the party. Captain Wilder walked off with Spender after him, and stopped quite some distance from the other men.

  “I suppose you can just explain what happened now,” Wilder said.

  Spender looked at the canal. “I don’t know. I was ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Biggs and us and the noise. Pah, what a spectacle!”

  “They’ve got to have their fun, it’s been a long trip.”

  “Where’s their respect, sir? Where’s their sense of the right thing?”

  “You’re tired, too, and you have a different way of looking at things, Spender. That’ll be a fifty-dollar fine for you.”

  “Yes, sir. It was just the idea of Them watching us make vile fools of ourselves.”

  “Them, Spender?”

  “The Martians, dead or not.”

  “Most certainly dead,” said the captain. “But do you think They know we’re here?”

  “Doesn’t an old thing always know when a new thing comes?” said Spender.

  “I suppose so. You sound as if you believe in ghosts and spirits.”

  “I believe in the things that were done, sir, and there are evidences of many things done on Mars. There are streets and there are houses and there are books, I imagine, and big canals and clocks and places for stabling, if not horses, well then some domestic animal, perhaps with twelve legs, who knows. Everywhere I look I see things that were used. They were touched and handled for centuries.

  “Ask me if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I’ll say yes. They’re all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we’ll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us, we’ll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere, in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we’ll give to the canals and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do. We’ll rip it all up, rip the skin off and change it to fit ourselves.”

  “We won’t ruin Mars,” said the captain. �
��It’s too big and too good.”

  “You think not? We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things. The only reason we didn’t set up hot dog stands in the midst of the Temple of Karnak in Egypt is because it was out of the way, and served no large commercial purpose. And Egypt is a small part of Earth. But here, this whole thing is ancient and different, and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up. I haven’t any faith in humans. We’ll call the canal the Rockefeller Canal and we’ll call the mountain King George Mountain and we’ll call the sea the Dupont Sea and we’ll call the cities Roosevelt and Lincoln and Coolidge City and it won’t ever be right, when there are the proper names to these places.”

  “That’ll be your job, as archaeologist, to find out the names and we’ll use them.”

  “A few men like myself, against all the commercial interests?” Spender looked at the iron mountains. “They know we’re here tonight, and I imagine they hate us because we’ve come to pry and ruin things.”

  The captain shook his head. “There’s no hatred here.” He listened to the wind. “From the look of their cities, they were a graceful, aesthetic, beautiful and philosophical people. They accepted what came to them. They acceded to racial death, that much we know, and without a last-moment war of frustration to tumble down their cities. Everyone we’ve seen so far has been flawlessly intact. They probably don’t mind us being here, any more than they’d mind children playing on the lawn, knowing and understanding children for what they are. And, anyway, perhaps all this will change us for the better.

  “Did you notice the peculiar quiet of the men, Spender, until Biggs forced them to get happy? They looked pretty humble and frightened. Looking at all this we know we’re not so hot, we’re young kids in rompers, shouting with our play-rockets and our atoms, loud and alive. But, one day, Earth will be this way, too. This will sober us up. It’s an object lesson in civilizations. We’ll learn from Mars. Now, suck in your chin and let’s go back and play happy. That fifty-dollar fine still stands.”