The Kyben Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  Themus did not know what reconditioning was, nor what the whole conversation had been about, nor who these people were, but he recognized the Watcher part, and the fact that something unpleasant was about to happen to him.

  He looked around for a way out, but there was none. He was effectively manacled by the sheer weight of numbers. The Cave was filled, and the walls were lined with people. All they had to do was move in and he’d be squashed.

  He remained very still, turned his inward eyes upward and ran painstakingly over the list of his family Lords, offering up to each of them paeans of praise and pleas for help and deliverance.

  “No, no!” Darfla was pleading, “He’s not really; He’s a Kyben. I wouldn’t have been able to stand him, would I, if he were a real Stuff?”

  Deere bit the inside of his cheek in thought. “We thought so, too, when we got the list, but since he’s been here, it’s been too early to tell, and now you’ve let him too close to it all. We don’t like this, Darfla, but—”

  “Test him. He’ll show you.” She was suddenly close to Deere, his hand in hers, her face turned down to the fat little man’s pudgy stare. “Please, Deere. For what uncle used to be.”

  Deere exhaled hilly, pursed his lips again and said, “ All right, Darfla. If the others say it’s all right. It’s not my decision to make.”

  He looked around. There was a mutter of assent from the throng. Deere turned to Themus, looking at the Watcher appraisingly.

  Then suddenly—

  “Here it is: we’re mad. You must prove to us youare mad. You must do—oh, let’s see—five mad acts. Truly mad. Right here in the Cave. You can do anything but harm one of us or try to escape. And we’re mad, so we’ll know if they’re mad acts or not. Now, go on.”

  “Tell him the rest, Deere, tell him—” Darfla began.

  “Quiet, woman! That’s all there is, Watcher. Go on.” He stood back, arms folded across his round little belly.

  “Mad? What kind of madness? I mean, like what? I don’t...I can’t do any...” Themus looked at Darfla. Something unhinged within him at sight of her, about to cry.

  He thought for a while. The crowd became impatient, voices called out things from the pack. He thought longer. Then his face smiled all the way from his mouth to his hairline.

  Calmly he walked over to Darfla and began undressing her.

  The clack of jaws falling was an audible thing in the sudden silence of the Cave.

  Themus stripped her piece by piece, carefully knotting and pulling each piece of clothing before he went on to the next. Blouse. Knot and pull tight. Belt. Knot and pull tight. Skirt. Knot and pull tight.

  Darfla offered no resistance, but her face went stoney and her jaw muscles worked rhythmically.

  Eventually she was naked to the skin.

  Themus bent down, made sure each item of clothing was securely knotted. Then he gathered it all up in a bundle and brought the armful to the girl. She put out her arms and he dropped the bundle into them.

  “Knots to you,” he said.

  “One,” said Deere.

  Themus could feel small generators in his head begin to spin, whirr and grind as they worked themselves up to a monstrous headache.

  He stood spraddle-legged in the open area among the Crackpots, a tall, blue-haired man with a nose just a trifle too long and cheeks just a trifle too sunken, and rubbed his a-trifle-too-long nose in deep concentration.

  Again he smiled.

  Then he spun three times on his toes, badly, and made a wild dash for one of the onlookers.

  The Crackpot looked around in alarm, saw his neighbors smiling at his discomfort, and looked back at Themus, who had stopped directly in front of him.

  The Crackpot wore a shirt and slacks of motley, a flat mortarboard-type hat askew over his forehead. The mortar-board slipped a fraction of an inch as he looked at Themus.

  The Watcher stood before him, intently staring at his own hand. Themus was clutching his left elbow with his right hand. His left hand was extended, the fingers bent up like spikes, to form a rough sort of enclosure.

  “See my guggle-fish?” asked Themus.

  The Crackpot opened his mouth once; strangled a bit, closed his mouth, strangled a bit, opened his mouth again. Nothing came out.

  Themus extended his hand directly under the other’s nose. It was obviously a bowl he was holding in his hand. “See my guggle-fish?” he repeated.

  Confused, the Crackpot managed to say, “W-what g-guggle-fish ? I don’t see any fish.”

  “That isn’t odd,” said Themus, grinning, “they all died last week.”

  Over the roar of the crowd the voice of a blocky-faced man next to the motley-wearer rose:

  “I see your guggle-fish. Right there in the bowl. I see them. Now what?”

  “You’re crazier than I am,” said Themus, letting the mythical bowl evaporate as he opened his hand, “I don’t have any bowl.”

  “Two;” said Deere, his brow furrowed.

  Without wasting a moment, Themus began shoving the Crackpots toward the wall. Without resistance they allowed themselves to be pushed a bit. Then they stopped.

  “For this one I’ll need everyone’s help,” said Themus. “Everybody has to line up. I need everyone in a straight line, a real straight line.” He began shoving again. This time they all allowed themselves to be pushed into a semblance of order, a line straight across the Cave.

  “No, no,” muttered Themus slowly, “that isn’t quite good enough. Here.” He went to one end, began moving each Crackpot a bit forward or backward till they were all approximately in the same positions of the line.

  He went to the right end and squinted down the line.

  “You there, fourth from the end, move back a half-step, will you. Uh, yes, that’s —just—stop! Fine. Now you,” he pointed to a fellow with yellow bagged-out trousers and no shirt, “move up just a smidgee—un—uh—nuh! Stop! That’s just perfect.”

  He stepped back away from them and looked along both ways, surveying them as a general surveys his troops.

  “You’re all nicely in line. All the same. The Crackpots are neatly maneuvered into being regimented Stuffed-Shirts. Thank you,” he said, grinning widely.

  “Three,” said Deere, blushing and furrowed at the same time.

  Themus was pacing back and forth by the time the crowd had hurriedly and self-consciously gotten itself out of rank and clumped around the Cave again.

  He paced from one huge stalagmite, kicking it on turning, to the edge of the mud-surrounded pool and began scrabbling in the mud at his feet.

  He scooped up two huge handfuls of the runny stuff and carried it a few feet away to a rock surface. Plunking it down he hurried back for another handful. This he carried with wild abandon, spraying those near him with drops of the gunk, till he was back where he had deposited the previous load. Then he stopped, considered for a long moment, then placed the mud gingerly atop the other, at an angle.

  Then he hurried back for more.

  This he again placed with careful deliberation, tongue poking from a comer of his mouth, eyes narrowed in contemplation.

  Then another load.

  And another.

  Each one placed with more care than the last, till he had a huge structure over four feet tall.

  He stepped back from it, looked at it, raised his thumb and squinted at it through one eye. Then he raced back to the deep hole that had been gouged out of the mud and took a fingerful of the stuff.

  He ran back, patted it carefully into place, smoothed it with an experienced hand, and stepped back, with a sigh and a look of utter contentment and achievement.

  “Ah! Just the way I wanted it,” he said...

  ...and jumped into the hole.

  “Four,” said Deere, tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks.

  Themus sat in the hole, legs drawn up and crossed, hands cupping his chin, elbows on knees. He sat.

  And sat longer.

  And still sat.
>
  And remained seated.

  Deere walked over to him and looked down. “What is the fifth act of madness?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  More quickly than anyone could follow, he had swiveled back and his head had revolved on his head in a blur, “There isn’t any?”

  “I’m going to sit here and not do any more.”

  The crowd murmured again. “What?” cried Deere. “What do you mean, you won’t do any more? We set you five. You’ve done four. Why no fifth?”

  “Because if I don’t do a fifth, you’ll kill me, and I think that’s mad enough even for you.”

  Though Deere’s back was turned and he was walking away, Themus was certain he heard, “Five,” from somewhere.

  “They want you to come back here again after you’ve seen my uncle,” said Darfla, a definite chill in her voice.

  They were walking briskly down a moving traverseway, the girl a few steps ahead of the Watcher.

  Themus knew he had a small problem on his hands.

  “Look, Darfla, I’m sorry about that back there, but it was my life or a little embarrassment for you. It was the first thing I could bring to mind, and I had to stall for time. I’m really sorry, but I’m sure they’ve seen a woman naked before, and you must have been naked before a man before so it shouldn’t—”

  Themus fell silent. The continued down the traverseway, Darfla striding forward, anger evident in each long step.

  Finally the girl came to an intersection of belt-strips and agilely swung across till she was on the slowest moving outer belt. She stepped off, took several rapid steps to lose momentum, and turned to Themus.

  “We’d better stop in here for a moment and get you something to wear over that Watcher uniform. It isn’t hard to avoid the Stuffed-Shirts, “ she said, looking at him with disparagement, “but there’s no sense taking foolish chances.”

  She indicated a small shop that was all window and no door, with a hastily painted message across one of the panes. ELGIS THE COSTUMER and IF WE DON’T GOT IT, IT AIN’T WORTH HAVING! They entered through a cleverly designed window that spun on a center-pin.

  Inside the shop Darfla spoke briefly to a tall, thin Crackpot in black half-mask and body-tight black suit. He disappeared down a shaft in the floor from which stuck a shining pole.

  The girl pulled a bolt of cloth off a corner of the counter and perched herself, with trim legs crossed. Themus stood looking at the shop.

  It was a costumer’s all right, and with an arrangement and selection of fantastic capacities. Clothing ranged from rustic Kyben farmgarb to the latest spun plastene fibers from all over the Galaxy. He was marveling at the endless varieties of clothing when the tall, thin Crackpot slid back up the pole.

  He stepped off onto the floor, much to Themus’ amazement, and no elevator-disc followed him. It appeared that the man had come up the pole the same way he had gone down, without mechanical assistance. Themus was long past worrying over such apparent inconsistencies. He shrugged and looked at the suit the fellow had brought up with him.

  Ten minutes later he looked at the suit on himself, in a full-length mirror-cube, and smiled at his sudden change from Underclass Watcher Themus to a sheeted and fetish-festooned member of the Toad-Revelers cult found on Fewb-huh IV.

  His earrings hung in shining loops to his shoulders, and the bag of toad-shavings on his belt felt heavier than he thought it should. He pulled the drawstring on the bag and gasped. They were toad-shavings. He tucked the bottom folds of the multi-colored sheet into his boot-tops, swung the lantern onto his back, and looked at Darfla in expectation.

  He caught her grinning, and when he, too, smiled, her face went back to its recent stoniness.

  Darfla made some kind of arrangement with Elgis, shook his hand, bit his ear, said, “How are the twins, Elgis?” to which the costumer replied, “Eh”‘ in a lackadaisical tone, and they left.

  The rest of the trip through the patchwork-quilt of Valasah was spent in silence.

  The Crackpots were not what they seemed. Of that Themus was certain. He had been very stupid not to notice it before, and he thought the Watchers must be even mote stupid for not having seen it in all their hundreds of years on Kyba.

  But there was a factor he did not possess. Garbage and water that ran in different directions through the same pipe, a beggar that knew how many coins he had in his pocket, a girl who could rip out the innards of a dicto-box, leaving it so it would work—and somehow he was now certain it would work—without a human behind it, and a full-sized cave built inside a concrete block. These were not the achievements of madmen.

  But they were mad!

  They had to be. All the things which seemed mysterious and superhuman were offset by a million acts of out-and-out insanity. They lived in a world of no standardization, no conformity at all. There was no way to gauge the way these people would act, as you could with the Kyben of the stars. It was—it was—well, insane!

  Themus’ nose itched in confusion, but he refrained from unseemly scratching.

  “Don’t I look like Santa Claus?” he said.

  “Who?” asked Themus, looking at the roly-poly florid face and bushy beard. He tried to ignore the jaggedly yellow scar that reached from temple to temple.

  “Santa Claus, Santa Claus, you lout? Haven’t you ever heard of the Earthmen’s mythical hero, Santa Claus? He was the hero of the Battle of the Alamo, he discovered what they call The Great Pyramid of Gizeh, he was the greatest drinker of milk out of wooden shoes that planet ever knew!”

  “What’s milk?” asked Themus.

  “Lords, what a clod!” He screwed up his lips in a childish pout. “I did immense research work on the subject. Immense!” Then he muttered, under his breath, almost an afterthought, “Immense.”

  The old man was frightened. It showed, even through the joviality of his garb and appearance.

  Themus could not understand the old man. He looked as though he would be quite the maddest of the lot, but he talked in a soft, almost whispering voice, lucidly, and for the most part of familiar things. Yet there was something about him which set him apart from the other Crackpots. He did not have the wild-eyed look.

  No one was saying anything and the sounds of their breathing in the basement hide-out was loud in Themus’ ears. “ Are you Boolbak, the steel-pincher?” the Watcher asked, to make conversation. It seemed like the thing to say.

  The bearded oldster shifted his position on the coal pile on which he was sitting, blackening his beard, covering his red suit with dust. His voice changed from a whisper to a shrill. “ A spy! A spy! They’ve come after me. You’ll do it to me! You’ll bend it! Get away from me, get away from me, gedda way from me, geddawayfromee!” The old man was peering out from over the top of the pile, pointing a shaking finger at Themus.

  “Uncle Boolbak!” Darfla’s brows drew down and she clapped her hands together. The old man stopped shouting and looked at her.

  “What?” he asked, pouting childishly.

  “He’s no spy, whatever he is,” she said, casting a definitely contemptuous glance at Themus. “He was a Watcher alerted to find you. I liked him,” she said looking toward the ceiling to find salvation for such a foul deed, “and I thought that it was about time you stopped this nonsense of yours and spoke to one of them. So I brought him here.”

  “Nonsense? Nonsense, is it! Well, you’ve sealed my doom, girl! Now they’ll bend it around your poor uncle’s head as sure as Koobis and Poorah rise every morning. Oh, what have you done ?”

  The girl shook her head sadly, “Oh, stop it, will you. No one wants to hurt you. Show him your steel-pinching.”

  “No!” he answered, pouting again.

  Themus watched in amazement. The man was senile. He was a tottering, doddering child. Of what possible use could he be ? Of what possible interest could he be to both the Watchers and the Crackpots, who had tried to stop Darfla’s bringing him here?

  Suddenly the old man smiled secretly and
moved in closer, sidling up to the Watcher as though he had a treasure everyone was after. He made small motions with his pudgy fingers, indicating he wanted Themus’ attention,his patience, his silence, and his ear, in that order. It was a most eloquent motioning, and Themus found he was complying, though no vocal request had been made. He bent closer.

  Uncle Boolbak dug into a pocket of the red coal-coated jacket, and fished out a cane-shaped, striped piece of candy. “Want a piece of candy? Huh, want it, huh?”

  Themus felt an urge to bolt and run, but he summoned all his dignity and said, “I’m Themus, Underclass Watcher, and I was told you—pitch steel. Is that right?”

  For a moment the old man looked unhappy that the Watcher did not want any candy, then suddenly his face hardened. The eyes lost their twinkle and looked like two cold diamonds blazing at him. Boolbak’s voice, too, became harder, more mature, actually older. “Yes, that’s right, I ‘pinch’ steel, as you put it. You wonder what that means, eh?”

  Themus found himself unable to talk. The man’s whole demeanor had changed. The Watcher suddenly felt like a child before a great intellect. He could only nod.

  “Here. Let me show you.” The old man went behind the furnace and brought out two plates of steel. From a workbench along one wall he took a metal punch and double-headed hammer. He threw down one of the plates, and handed Themus the punch and hammer.

  “Put a hole in this with that punch,” he said, motioning Themus toward the other plate, which he had laid flat on the workbench.

  Themus hesitated. ‘“Come, come, boy. Don’t dawdle.”

  The Watcher stepped to the workbench, set the punch on the plate and tapped lightly till he had a hole started. Then he placed the punch in it again and brought the hammer down on its head with two swift strokes. The clangs rang loud in the dim basement. The punch sank through the plate and went a quarter-inch into the table. “I didn’t hit it very hard,” Themus explained, looking over his shoulder at “Santa Claus,”