by Jerry
Jordan’s time was down to five hours. He was hungry, and the air in his helmet stank.
“The time,” Treemonisha stated, “is fourteen o-clock, and all is well.”
“Hmm? Oh, it’s you. What is time?”
“Oh, brother. You’re really getting into it, aren’t you? Time is: the time for my twice-daily call to see how things are in your neck of space. How are you doing?”
“Wonderful. I’m at peace. When the oxygen runs out, I’ll at least die a peaceful death. And I have you to thank for it.”
“I always hoped I’d go kicking and screaming,” she said. “And what’s this about dying? I told you I had something going.”
“Thank you, darling, but you don’t need to carry on with that anymore. I’m glad you did, because for a time there if I hadn’t thought you were working to save me, I never would have achieved the peace I now have. But I can see now that it was a device to keep me going, to steady me. And it worked, Tree, it worked. Now, before you sign off, would you take a few messages? The first one is to my mother. ‘Dear mom . . .’ ”
“Hold on there. I refuse to hear anything so terribly personal unless there’s a real need for it. Didn’t I find a way for you to kill yourself after you had given it up? Don’t I always pull more gold out of those transmissions than you do? Haven’t you noticed anything?”
The time-lag!
Panic was rising again in his voice as he hoarsely whispered—“Where are you?”
And instantly:
“A thousand kilometers off your starboard fo’c’sle, mate, and closing fast. Look out toward Gemini, and in about thirty seconds you’ll see my exhaust as I try to bring this thing in without killing both of us.”
“This thing? What is it?”
“Spaceship. Hold on.”
He got himself turned in time to see the burn commence. He knew when it shut off exactly how long the burn had been; he had seen it enough times. It was three and five-eighths seconds, the exact burn time for the first stage of the message rockets he had launched every day for almost a year.
“Ooh! Quite a few gees packed into these things,” she said.
“But how . . .?”
“Hold on a few minutes longer.” He did as he was asked.
“Damn. Well, it can’t be helped, but I’m going to go by you at about fifty kilometers per hour, and half a kilometer away. You’ll have to jump for it, but I can throw you a line. You still have that rocket to push against?”
“Yes, and I have quite a bit of fuel in my backpack. I can get to you. That’s pretty good shooting over that distance.”
“Thanks. I didn’t have time for anything fancy, but I . . .”
“Now you hush. I’m going to have to see this to believe it. Don’t spoil it for me.”
And slowly, closing on him at a stately fifty kilometers per, was . . . a thing . . . that she had off-handedly called a spaceship!
It was all rough-welded metal and ungainly struts and excess mass, but it flew. The heart of it was a series of racks for holding the message rocket first stages in clusters of ten. But dozens of fourth and fifth stages stuck out at odd angles, all connected by wire to Treemonisha’s old familiar lounging chair. All the padding and upholstery had frozen and been carelessly picked off. And in the chair was Treemonisha.
“Better be ready in about fifty seconds.”
“How did you do it? How long did it take you?”
“I just asked myself: ‘What would Rock Rogers have done?’ and started whipping this into shape.”
“You don’t fool me for an instant. You never cared for Rock. What would Maryjane Peters, superscientist, have done?”
He could hear the pleased note in her voice, though she tried not to show it.
“Well, maybe you’re right. I worked on it for three days, and then I had to go whether it was ready or not, because it was going to take me two days to reach you. I worked on it all the way over here, and I expect to nurse it all the way back. But I intend to get back, Jordan, and I’ll need all the help I can get from my crew.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Get ready. Jump!”
He jumped, and she threw the line out, and he snagged it, and they slowly spun around each other, and his arms felt like they would be wrenched off, but he held on.
She reeled him in, and he climbed into the awkward cage she had constructed. She bustled around, throwing away expended rocket casings, ridding the ship of all excess mass, hooking him into the big oxygen bottle she had fetched.
“Brace yourself. You’re going to have bruises all over your backside when I start up.”
The acceleration was brutal, especially since he wasn’t cushioned for it. But it lasted only three and five-eighths seconds.
“Well, I’ve lived through three of these big burns now. One more to go, and we’re home free.” She busied herself with checking their course, satisfied herself, then sat back in the chair.
They sat awkwardly side by side for a long twenty seconds.
“It’s . . . it’s funny to be actually sitting here by you,” he ventured.
“I feel the same way.” Her voice was subdued, and she found it hard to glance over at him. Hesitantly, her hand reached out and took his. It shocked him to his core, and he almost didn’t know what to do. But something took over for him when he finally appreciated through all the conditioned reflexes that it was all right, he could touch her. It seemed incredible to him that the spacesuits didn’t count for anything; it was enough that they could touch. He convulsively swept her into his arms and crushed her to him. She pounded his back, laughing raggedly. He could barely feel it through the suit, but it was wonderful!
“It’s like making love through an inflated tire,” she gasped when she calmed down enough to talk.
“And we’re the only two people in the universe who can say that and still say it’s great because, before, we were making love by postcard.” They had another long hysterical laugh over that.
“How bad is it at your place?” he finally asked.
“Not bad at all. Everything we need is humming. I can give you a bath . . .”
“A bath!” It sounded like the delights of heaven. “I wish you could smell me. No, I’m glad you can t.
“I wish I could. I’m going to run the tub full of hot, hot water, and then I’m going to undress you and lower you into it, and I’m going to scrub all those things I’ve been staring at for a year and take my time with it, and then—”
“Hey, we don’t need stories anymore, do we? Now we can do it.”
“We need them for another two days. More than ever now, because I can’t reach the place that’s begging for attention. But you didn’t let me finish. After I get in the tub with you and let you wash me, and before we head hand in hand for my bedroom, I’m going to get Rock Rogers and Maryjane Peters and The Black Widow and Marc Antony and Jo-jo and his wild mate and hold their heads under the water until they drown.”
“No you don’t. I claim the right to drown Rock Rogers.”
THE MOTHER TRIP
Frederik Pohl
It could have been just this way: That the get of Moolkri Mawkri could have landed in a faster-than-light spaceship resembling an artichoke on the outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi.
In this version Mawkri gathers her Get-cluster around her broodingly, while Moolkri assumes the shape of a man. The Get has studied all of the Earth’s TV programs while they were in orbit, and they have picked an average person for Moolkri to be, not too tall, not too symmetrical, not too dvezhnizt (a term in their language which relates to the proportion between upper and middle circumferences). The Get is satisfied with Moolkri’s appearance, but all the same it is pretty funny-looking. They laugh as he exits the spacecraft to explore.
Moolkri has well assimilated TV lore, and so he knows how to behave in a way appropriate to his body. He hooks his “thumbs in his “belt, crosses a deserted bridge, and strides swaggeringly down the light-saturated and to
tally uninhabited street.
It does not seem unusual to Moolkri that there should be no one gazing into the bright shop windows. He does not have a very good grasp of what is usual or unusual for human beings. It is late at night, and so a human being (or at least one from another city than Jackson) might find it strange that everything was so brightly lit. Contrariwise, a human might consider it odd that with every amenity turned on for shoppers, there was not a single strolling person to he seen. Moolkri does not realize this is strange. He is aware that sometimes streets are deserted and sometimes not; he is also aware that sometimes they are bright and sometimes dark; he is simply not aware that deserted is not really compatible with well-lit, but then there is a lot he is not aware of about the Earth.
So Moolkri swings, gunman wide, his “chaps rustling against each other and his “bandanna bright against his “neck. He slouches past the People’s Cut Rate Pharmacy and Bette’s New York Boutique and the Yazoo-Jackson Consolidated All-Faith Ashram, looking in the windows. He reads a typed notice about a lost Australian terrier. He inspects a naked black dummy with no hands, waiting for the window dresser to return in the morning and give her hands and ball gown. It is all interesting to him, and back in the spaceship Mawkri and her Get chatter excitedly among themselves, forgetting to be afraid as they receive his impressions.
It is not only his sense of vision that is active, it is also his sense of hearing, although that input does not produce much he considers worth noting. There are no voices, no footsteps. Overhead there is the sound of a motor, which he identifies easily enough as a helicopter. It is too far away for him to care much. He does not realize that it is quartering the city, alert for the sight of stray humans on the broad, bright street. He does not hear the radio message that the helicopter pilot transmits to the ground. Back in the spaceship the rest of the Get could have heard it, did in fact register the radio signal as an artifact originating nearby, but they did not associate the message with Moolkri.
Then the black-and-white slides silently around the corner. There is only one policeman in it. They are not expecting riots of mad killers, only the odd break-and-grab hoodlum or the hopeful would-be mugger. Moolkri hears the prowl car. First he hears the faint purr of the motor and whisper of tires, then, only in the last moment before it skids to a stop beside him, the quick bleat of its siren. He turns to look. The young cop leaps out. “Hands against the wall! Spread your feet! Hold it right there! He does not say it like that precisely, there is brushwood and bayou in his accent, but Moolkri is not attuned to regional distinctions of dialect. Moolkri submits. It is unfortunate, but it is all right. He has been ready to submit to human violence, in case it should develop, ever since he accepted the assignment to explore. Now it appears that he will not return to the Get, but he does not mind that. The Get will continue. He does not feel as though he were in danger. He only feels rage, and his rage races decisively, by means of his fourth and seventh senses, across the world and into the heavens.
In the spacecraft Mawkri mourns. The Get moves fearfully around her. She had wished to extend her motherhood to this planet, but it had rejected her. It was unfortunate since, among other things, it meant the end of sexual intercourse for her for the rest of her life, but she does not protest, only regrets.
Moolkri opens all the tactile inputs he has bothered to connect in order to perceive the policeman fully. He observes stimuli identified as pain, heat, body disorientation, and sex climax denied as the policeman’s hand invades his body spaces. (There turns out to be nothing in the “pockets, nothing at all, Moolkn had never realized anything should be put there.)
Out of curiosity (he is overdeveloped in curiosity, that is why he is here), Moolkri increases his audio perception and, translating easily from the peckerwood English, hears the policeman radio in to see if there is a want on an unidentified white male pedestrian wearing a cowboy suit, about fifty, five feet seven, white beard, bald, blue eyes, no visible scars.
Listening in this way is only curiosity on Moolkri’s part. It can no longer affect the outcome, since violence has already been done to him. He waits patiently, not very long. He hears headquarters report that there is no want on the described individual. The policeman tells Moolkri he can go. Moolkri adds to his file the datum that the violence has been withdrawn, but only out of neatness. The file is now complete. No more will be added.
The policeman cautions him against walking alone in the city at night, mentioning the risk of being robbed or harmed. He advises Moolkri to carry identification at all times. He gets back into his car, hesitates, then says, with half a smile and a cursory salute, “Y’all enjoy your stay in Jackson now, hear?
But it is too late.
The automatic orbiting guardians have already reacted to Moolkri’s broadcast danger of violence, as they were programmed to do. The spacecraft with Mawkri and the Get lifts and flees screaming into the sky. And the first planet busters begin to drop.
Fusion infernos blossom and burst. Cities slide into the already boiling sea. Mawkri’s motherhood has punished the offense.
It is the end of the world of human beings, except as a blob of molten rock, and that is one way it could have been.
Or it could have been like this, that all of Moolkri Mawkri’s Get remained in orbit, thundering down motherly orders to be obeyed:
Under pain of destruction!
Humans are commanded!
Alternative is the planet busters, and the end of your world!
In this version the Get prudently refrained from landing but after careful study of all radio and television transmissions elected to play a mother’s arduous role from out in space. So they made a plan and ordered the world to carry it out. Six representatives of humankind were to present themselves, unarmed and tractable, in orbit: one each from China, the United States, Sweden, Rhodesia, Brazil, and the U.S.S.R.
The Get, here, too, had carefully studied all the EMF transmissions from Tokyo Tower and London’s GPO and the American networks. The Get thought that most of them were very funny. Nevertheless they decoded them into aural and visual signals and analyzed them for meaning and implications.
Both Moolkri and Mawkri agreed that this complicatedly comic planet needed to be taken into the motherhood of Mawkri, and in this version they studied the means of manipulation nations and persons used upon each other. They were aware of the human custom of giving each other ultimatums: thus the commands from space. They were not as aware of certain other human habits. They were taken quite by surprise when, united in a common purpose at last, all six of the nations that had a nuclear missile capability conferred through their secret hot lines, set a time, and fired simultaneously upon the orbiting spaceship of Moolkri Mawkri and the Get.
Of the resulting swarm of missiles it happened to be a cold-launched American Minuteman III that destroyed the ship, the Get, Moolkri, and Mawkri herself, and ended the first contact between their people and ours.
There is, however, a warmer and more loving version.
In this version Moolkri spoke up:
“I do not think we can trust ourselves to these creatures, he said. “Neither do I think we should reveal ourselves to them, either for communication or to impose our helpful will on them. Let’s cool it while we figure things.
There was some resistance to this, particularly from a forensicist and a KP pusher in the Get. That was right and proper. It was their function to do that. The forensicist was charged with debating all devil’s-advocate positions that no one really cared to espouse, and she was very good at it. The KP pusher (who was not really called that, but none of their words are much like ours) was detailed to making things happen. He always urged action, so that nothing desirable would fail to be done simply because no one bothered to make it occur. Nevertheless, in this version Moolkri prevailed upon the rest of the Get to lie low in orbit, and so they did while drones and far-watchers made a saturation study of one small area of the planet. It was near Arcata, California.
It was in behavior, however, that the bipeds exhibited the most amazing diversity. It was not only that one biped differed from another. The same biped might behave in differing ways at differing times! They found and labeled one who was clearly a KP pusher; an hour later she was an empathizer!
Semantic analysis of their communications to each other was equally confusing. Some of the bipeds were aggressively mission-oriented within themselves:
“I’m a woman, not a doll. (Throwing a wastepaper basket at the male lying in the bed.) “I’ve got twenty-two years of rage inside me because of this mother trip you lay on me! (Slamming a door.)
Moolkri played that tape five times to make sure he had understood it, marveling, for only a few minutes before it had seemed this pair were preparing to procreate.
Some of the bipeds were role playing; that is, their mission was assigned from context:
“Now, gentlemen, please! (Big expression of the lips and corners of the eyes called “smile. ) “You know that under the American system my client is entitled to the presumption of innocence. (Eyes turned directly into a television camera.) “You gentlemen can try this case in your newspapers all you like-and I’m not saying you shouldn’t; you have a right to freedom of expression; and I approve that right !-but the State of California Will decide my client’s guilt or innocence, not you. (Decisive up and down movement of the chin and head.)