THE DECEIVERS

by Alfred Bester

  The Dutch, plus others, were on Jupiter’s Callisto which, like Ganymede, is even bigger than Mercury. Their Domes are reminiscent of medieval Bruges, with cobbled streets and overhanging houses. (The Callisto Chamber of Commerce won’t like this, but the local whores, like their predecessors in Amsterdam, still hang small mirrors on either side of their windows for a full view of the length of the street, and tap-tap-tap the glass pane with a coin whenever a likely john passes by.)

  Callisto is heavy in the gold, silver, jewel and gem-cutting business which has brought a large Jewish population to the Domes. The Jews are traditional experts with gems, and have always been on traditionally friendly terms with the Dutch. There are also the traditional artists’ colonies, and the rest of the Solar wonders how painters with names like Rembrandt-29-van Rijn or Jan-31-Vermeer dast demand and get so much loot for avant-garde productions to which no sensible person would give house-room.

  Saturn’s Titan (not to be confused with Uranus’ Titania, about which much more later) started like England’s old Australia. It was a dumping ground for hopeless recidivists until the Solar decided that it was cheaper to execute than transport, and to hell with the do-gooders and bleeding hearts. Titan descendants still speak an anachronistic, incomprehensible convicts’ jargon, is a lopsided inferno of ancient hatreds against the Solar, and plays no part in this faithful history except to provide the classic line, “First prize, a day on Titan; second prize, a week on Titan.”

  Some of the small satellites like Phobos, Mimas, and Jupiter VI and VII have tiny freak colonies devoted to various religions, theater groups, diets, and sexual abstinences. With one lovely, extraordinary exception, no local inhabitants had ever been discovered on the solar planets and satellites, so the Dutch didn’t have to buy Callisto for $24. No Indian wars against the English on Mars. Some clown calling himself “Star-born Jones” had started a cult for a thousand more who also believed that as infants they had been secretly kidnapped from Outer Space by the Solar. He established a JonesDome in the Caloris Basin on Mercury, which nobody wanted anyway.

  A Mercurian “day” lasts 88 Terran days and the temperature soars high enough to melt lead. There was no need for the aliens snatched from the stars to commit suicide; the Dome insulation failed one day and they all roasted to death. The sort of sadists who relish the horrors of Grand Guignol theater often tour JonesDome to stare at the roasted, frozen mummies. One creep with a sick sense of humor stuck an apple in Star-born Jones’ mouth. It’s still there.

  Ah, but that one extraordinary exception, Titania, the sprite of the unexpected, daughter of Uranus, mythic Ruler of the Heavens. Here were found local natives indeed! The great William Herschel, professional musician and amateur astronomer, sort of stumbled on Uranus with his homemade telescope back in 1781 and spotted the satellite Titania six years later. Are there any questions?

  Q: Yes, we would like a description, please.

  A: Well, Uranus is covered with very bright cloud bands of orange, red, and—

  Q: Not Uranus, Titania.

  A: Ah, yes, the magic moon. You know, the Cosmos must have a sense of humor. To almost every one of its systems or combinations a “Drop of Freak” is added to thumb its nose at order and harmony. It rather reminds one of Roger Bacon’s famous line, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

  Q: Francis.

  A: What?

  Q: Not Roger, Francis Bacon.

  A: Francis, of course. Thank you. In the Solar assemblage, Titania is that strangeness, to the wonderment and exasperation of all the rest; wonderment because the few clues and hints we have are a fascinating exasperation because we can’t understand them.

  Q: What are they?

  A: If you’re acquainted with gems and crystals, you know that just about any crystal may have fluid inclusions. In size, inclusions range from a diameter of less than one micron to a few centimeters. Inclusions bigger than a millimeter in diameter are rather rare; those in the centimeter range are museum pieces.

  Q: But don’t they destroy the value of gems?

  A: True. True, but we’re exploring the geology of crystals. Most of their inclusions contain a solution of various salts in various concentrations from nearly pure water to concentrated brine. Most also enclose a bubble of gas. When the bubble is small enough to respond to irregularities in the number of molecules striking it, it can be seen to wander continuously in a jerky Brownian movement:

  Q: You lost us. Did you know?

  A: Sorry. I just threw in a little classy Einstein, but, you know, it’s fascinating to watch such a bubble under the microscope and to think that it’s been nervously pacing its cell for a billion years.

  Q: When are you getting to Titania, the magic moon?

  A: Wait for it. Wait for it. Some inclusions have one or more crystals in their liquid; some are composed of several immiscible liquids; a few contain gas alone. Sometimes the crystals within the inclusion have their own fluid inclusions with bubbles in them, and so ad infinitum. Now, multiply this by a thousand miles, her diameter, and you have Titania, the freak of the Solar.

  Q: What!

  A: Indeed yes. Under the crust of meteoric trash and rubble accumulated through the eons, the satellite contains a conglomerate of giant crystals ranging from a foot to a mile in diameter.

  Q: You ask us to believe that?

  A: Why not? The traditional models of planets and satellites are being revised. It’s speculated that Terra may actually be a living organism; we just can’t go deep enough to find out. We do know that a hell of a lot more went into the formation of the Solar than gases condensing into mere solids.

  Q: And what about Titania’s crystals?

  A: They have a multitude of inclusions and inclusions within inclusions ad infinitum.

  Q: And are they supposed to be alive, too?

  A: We don’t know, but we do know that they contain a fascinating life-form that has evolved, displaying its own Brownian movement. They’re wonderful and perplexing and exasperating because they won’t let the Solar visit and explore. “Titania for the Titanians,” is their slogan.

  Q: What do they look like?

  A: The inclusions? A sort of proto-universe. They’re self-illuminating and sometimes syncopate or synchronize when you jet close enough to make them out through the crust. There seems to be some sort of molecular or osmotic linkage between them which—

  Q: No, no. The locals. The natives of Titania. What do you look like?

  A: Oh, the Titanians. What do they look like? Italian, English, French, Chinese, Black, Brown, your wife, your husband, three lovers, two dentists, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  Q: Don’t joke. What do they look like?

  A: Who’s joking? They look like any living thing. The Titanians are polymorphs, which means they can take any damn shape they please.

  Q: And any sex?

  A: No. Boys are boys and girls are girls, and they don’t reproduce by budding.

  Q: Is it an alien culture?

  A: It’s alien but not from a distant star. It’s strictly a home-grown Solar product, but man like it’s a race apart.

  Q: Is it an ancient culture?

  A: Dating back to the Terran Tertiary at least; around fifty million years.

  Q: Is it a primitive culture?

  A: No. It’s advanced out of sight.

  Q: Then why haven’t the Titanians visited our earth in the past?

  A: And what makes you think they haven’t? King Tutankhamen could have been a Titanian. Or Pocahontas. Or Einstein. Or Rin-tin-tin. Or the mad scientist’s Giant Clam That Clobbered Cuba. Or do I mean the giant scientist’s Mad Clam?

  Q: What! Are they dangerous?

  A: No, they’re full of fun and games. You never know what they’re up to next. They’re sprites of the unexpected.

  And one of them fell in love with the Synergist.

  We’d been tailing and using the Synergist, without his knowledge, for
several years as a kind of hunting dog; in fact, our code name for him was “Pointer.” You’ll want to know how we used him. Here’s an example.

  The Solar was being flooded with counterfeit coins and tokens, beautiful jobs minted from Britannia metal. We perted the operation—Pert is the acronym for Program Evaluation and Review Technique—put together a flow chart of the progress of the fakes from Mars out into the Solar, but we couldn’t locate the Critical Path to attack. In other words, we had to find the one line in the network through which alone we could stop everything.

  Well, “Pointer” was in the London Dome doing a Cockney color feature for Solar Media. He explored all the patterns, including the traditional Cockney Rhyming Slang; “plates” for “feet”—plates of meat, feet; “frog” for “road”—frog and toad, road; “titfer” for “hat”—tit for tat, hat; “dot” for “flash” (flash is counterfeit money)—dot and dash, flash. And that was our Critical Path.

  Because there was an antique shop in New Strand called “Dot and Dash” which specialized in old medals, old silver loving cups, ornamental presentation swords, fancy gavels and maces… that sort of thing. Very chic. Very expensive. We’d been combing the metal foundries for the source of the coins without success; and here it was, right under our nose, unconsciously pointed out for us. Old loving cups aren’t silver; they’re Britannia metal.

  We knew a lot about “Pointer,” we had to, but we didn’t know what breed he really was—he didn’t know himself—and I’d best explain the enigma by describing my first meeting with him some time after we’d discovered that we could use his unique qualities.

  It was at one of Jay Yael’s delightful talk-ins. Jay is a professional art mavin and he collects people the same way he collects pictures. There were a dozen guests, including Yael’s prized protégé, the Synergist. He was a tallish, angular, formerly-young man who somehow gave the impression that he would have been more comfortable without clothes.

  He behaved like the rare, better sort of celebrity, and he was somewhat celebrated; balanced, amused, never taking himself seriously, clearly showing his feeling that fame is only part earned and mostly luck. And he had an extravagant sense of humor.

  He displayed an absorbed interest in everybody and everything, listening intently and timing his responses to encourage speakers and draw them out. The timing was his synergic genius, but he had another remarkable quality; the ability to convince each separate member of a group that his absorbed interest was devoted solely to him- or herself. He made eye-contact and his glances said that you were the only one who really counted.

  When people are poised and successful there’s always the danger of inspiring hostility unless it can be seen that they’re not altogether perfect. The Synergist had private flaws, to be sure, but also a public one which was curious and arresting. He wore enormous black-rimmed spectacles in an attempt to conceal the astonishing sunbursts scarred on his cheeks. He had a habit of pulling the spectacles down to mask the scars, so automatic that it was almost a tic.

  He was Rogue Winter, of course, and during a lull in the conversation-pit I asked him whether his first name was a nickname. This merely to pique him into talking, you understand. I knew all about him because that was part of my job.

  “No,” he said solemnly. “It’s short for Rogue Elephant. Dr. Yael discovered me in Africa, where he shot my mother. She’d been crossed with a gorilla by an alien breeder from Boötes alpha.” He pulled the spectacles down. “No, I’m a liar. It’s really short for Rogue Male. Dr. Yael discovered me in a whorehouse where he shot the madam. Dear Madam Bruce,” he added wistfully. “He was like a mother to me.” Spectacles. “But if you must have the vero truth,” he said in deadly earnest, “my full name is Rogue’s Gallery Winter. After Dr. Yael shot the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard, he—”

  “Oh stop it, son,” Yael laughed. We were all laughing. “Tell the nice lady how I made my greatest discovery.”

  “I don’t know about the great-bit, sir, but it was your discovery and it’s your story. Damned if I’m going to goniff into your act.”

  “Yes, I raised you genteel-like,” Yael smiled. “Well, briefly, Rogue’d been found in the wreckage of a craft by scouts from the Maori Dome on Ganymede. He was an infant, the only survivor, and they brought him back to the Dome, where the King or Chief, Te Uinta, formally adopted him.”

  “He had no sons,” Winter explained, “only daughters. When Uinta dies, I get to be king banana.”

  “Hence the blazon of royalty on Rogue’s cheeks, of which he’s so absurdly ashamed.”

  “They kind of zig girls off into a zag,” Winter said. Spectacles again.

  Knowing his track record with women, I had to stifle a laugh, and I’m almost certain that his quick eye caught it.

  “The Maori named him Rog,” Yael continued, “because those were the only I.D. letters that could be made out on the wreck. R-dash-oh-gee. R-OG Uinta, pronounced with a long ‘O’ as in Rogue. Right, son?”

  “Sounded more like R-grunt-O, sir,” Winter said and pronounced his name Maori-style. “Makes people want to say, ‘Gesundheit.’”

  “End of part one,” Yael went on. “Part two. I was visiting the Maori Dome to have a look at their wonderful woodcarving and came across this ten-year-old kid with his sister. She was wearing a beaded tunic and he was pointing to the beads and trying to explain a pattern he saw in them.”

  “Which was?” I asked.

  “Tell the nice lady, R-grunt-G.”

  “It seemed so obvious.” Winter pulled the specs down. “The pattern was beads and stitches in a triangle:

  Red-Red-Red-Red-Red-Red-Red-Red

  Stitch-Stitch-Stitch-Stitch

  Black-Black

  Stitch.”

  Yael rolled his eyes to heaven. “God deliver mere mortals from a genius!” he laughed. “Did you hear him speaking triangle? He will do that; he thinks and lives patterns. I’ll have to translate. The king’s child was pointing to a group of eight red beads and holding up one finger. Then he pointed to four empty stitches and made Maori sign for zero. One finger up for two black beads. Zero sign for the single empty stitch. Then he swept his palm across the triangle and held up ten fingers. His sister giggled because she was ticklish, and that was my discovery.”

  “What?” I asked. “That girls are ticklish?”

  “Of course not. That her brother was a genius.”

  “At beadwork design?”

  “Sharpen a wit, madame. One group of eight. No four. One two. No units. The king’s child was counting in binary. One-oh-one-oh equals ten.”

  “It seemed so obvious,” Winter repeated.

  “What? Obvious?” Yael snorted. “A naked, illiterate Maori kid discovering binary on his own? Well, naturally I made a deal with King Te Uinta, brought R-grunt-G back to Terra, Englished his name to Rogue Winter, began his education, and then had a problem. Where the devil do you aim a child with a genius for patterns?”

  “Math?” I suggested.

  “That came second. With my bias, art came first, but after a brilliant start in Paris the boy lost interest and damped off. Then math at M.I.T. and the same thing. Architecture at Princeton, business at Harvard, Juilliard for music, Cornell Med, Taliesin for Dome design, astrophysics at Palomar—all the same story; brilliant start and then a damping off of dedication.”

  “They all seemed compartmentalized,” Winter said. “Parts of a whole without any connection. I was looking for the whole ball of wax.”

  “He was of age by now, so I drove him out—”

  “With whips,” Winter cringed.

  “With a thousand in his pocket for a Wanderjahr, and stern orders not to return until he’d discovered what he wanted to do with himself. Frankly, I expected him to come crawling back, dead broke and obedient…”

  “Like a rogue and peasant slave.”

  “What’s that cribbed from?” I asked Winter.

  “Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2,” he whispered. “Don’t tell a
nyone, but I studied English Lit. behind Yael’s back. You know, Major British Writers I & II. Busted that too,” he added, “owing to a surfeit of lampreys.”

  “Instead, the young man swaggered in, if you please, with cash bursting out of his jumpsuit and the tape of the damnedest integration the Solar has ever seen. You all must recall ‘Lockstep,’ a best-seller. Rogue wove gambling on Luna with—”

  “I ran the doctor’s gift up to a hundred thousand before word got around and they barred me from the casino tables,” Winter laughed. “Rogue the Greek, they called me.”

  “—with corn crops in Kansas, Meta on Triton, high fashion on Ganymede, the Women’s Movement on Venucci, art auctions on Callisto—all into a Solar pattern which he made so obvious but which had never been noticed before. He’d found himself, by God! He was a Synergist.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Sprite and the Synergist

  synergy (sin er·ji), n. Combined action or operation. Cooperative action of discrete agencies such that the total effect is greater than the sum of the effects taken independently.

  —Noah Webster, 1758-1843

  The synergic sense in Rogue Winter was not an overall resonance to every pattern and construct; he had odd deaf/blind spots, many trivial, a few serious. Most serious was the fact that he responded to the patterns of three languages but was only conscious of relating to two. This is what plunged him into disaster.

  Winter spoke Solar-Verbal because he was an Inquisitor (back in the twentieth century they called it an “Investigative Reporter”) and the words of the worlds were the tools of his trade. He knew he understood Soma-Gestalt (back in the twentieth century they called it “body English”) because he’d had much investigating experience communicating with strangers on many levels, and it was his business to discover what realities lay hidden behind the concealment of words.