Professor Insfree retired to the back of the house and returned with his beard shaved off. It was a symbol to all of us.
Omieron was back in no time, he rushed in panting, his eyes wild, and handed the end of the rope to his mother. “Get me out of this hairy century,” he screamed.
“What happened?” Mrs. Jrob asked.
“She tried to poison me!” Omieron grabbed at his throat dramatically. “I can still taste it. The old hag shoved poison in my mouth.”
“Creech preserves,” I guessed brilliantly. “They’re perfectly harmless, Mrs. Jrob. They may taste a little odd to your son.” As a matter of fact, they taste a little odd to everyone.
“Mrs. Blake let you come back here alone? Nobody held your rope?”
“Held it? She tried to take my collar off.” Omieron shuddered. “Threatened my entire sense of security. And would the other kids get a laugh out of it if I showed up without my collar. What would I have to take off at graduation? I had to freeze her.”
Professor Blake fixed Omieron with a furious gaze. “What have you done to my wife, you unnatural child?”
“Give me that Freeze Gun,” Mrs. Jrob said with tight lips.
“Aw, Mama . . .”
“Give it to me or I’ll leave you here.”
“Aw . . .” He handed it over.
“The question is,” Professor Blake blazed, “what did he do to my wife?”
“Froze her.”
“Is she . . . is she . . .?” He had a horrible thought.
“Not literally. You people are so hairy. She’ll be immobilized for twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll sue,” Professor Blake shouted as he stormed out.
“You needn’t bother. We won’t be here. I’m taking Omieron back.”
“Not a bad idea,” several people remarked.
And so, in the end, Mr. Jrob resigned from the Future Chair because of cultural lag, and everybody was reasonably happy.
Except me. Because I found something out just as the Jrobs were leaving.
“Well, I guess I won’t be seeing you again,” I remarked happily as they stood on their pile of synthetic boards waiting for Translation.
“Not exactly,” Mrs. Jrob answered.
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
“You died when I was a baby, Grandma.”
Which is why I am so interested in the electric zither.
THE END
THE ULTIMATE SIN
No matter what people say, one place, as Quant Aut discovered, is not just like another. Consider, for example, the wicked planet Chromata. . . .
HAVING TRAVELED MUCH, Quant should, as he had been told he would, have found that one place is so like another that one had just as well stay home and look for bluebirds in one’s back yard.
This rule, however, applies only to those who keep finding themselves wherever they go. Quant had avoided himself all his life, probably by accident. There is supposed to come to each of us, in our adolescence, that point of selfrealization, of identity, when one says, My name is Quant Aut and I am I, with all that implies. And then, had this happened, say, to Quant, he would have painted himself blue (or whatever) to frighten his enemies and ornamented himself with a torque (or whatever) to please his friends and within a short time no one, least of all Quant Aut, would have suspected he had not been born with these appurtenances and would carry them to the grave.
Quant, as it happened, was asleep or perhaps had a bad cold on Self-realization Day, and therefore remained a child well into his adulthood.
Anyway, one place is not like another.
There had been, for instance, the planet Erx, which no one had ever seen but Quant Aut. The planet Erx, it is true, was a scientific anomaly—but more of the planet Erx later.
At the moment Quant Aut, whose ship had been landed by automatic controls while he finished the process of emerging from suspended animation—at the moment . . . but it seems so unlikely! Quant, who had all his life believed everything—which is the only way to learn things, as children do—Quant for the very first time could not believe his eyes.
There had been no question on the planet Erx, you understand. He saw the thing and that made it real, and if the scientists came along later and proved it was there by means of the most delicate instruments with indescribable names, that was all right. If, on the other hand, they had proved it was not there, that would have been their loss and not Quant’s.
But what Quant sees now, or thinks he sees, and he is at this moment losing his innocence—not around him, where it should be, but below him as he walks out and stands on air, is a world sparkling with all the colors unknown to man.
Unknown to man.
Not mauve or off-orange, but completely new colors, which Quant could naturally not describe or compare to anything at all. If you knew only blue, how would you describe red?
It hurt his eyes and it hurt the inside of his mind and he was immediately afraid of it. It was alien as nothing else had ever been alien—something even Tennyson could not have been a part of and for which the bell would not toll.
It was, of course, evil—as it could not possibly be included in the Humanities—and Quant stood and gazed down at the evil of it and the alienness of it, and as his childhood passed from him and the scales fell from his eyes (or rose before them, depending on your view of maturity) and what had previously been in him a spirit of adventure and a childlike curiosity about life and creation—became an exultant desire to plumb depths no man had ever plumbed before, to align himself with unnatural forces, to do something utterly unhuman, utterly monstrous utterly unique.
In short, to sin.
Now Quant was a Unitarian, and as such had been short on sin, Unitarians normally have to figure out what is sinful and then do it and then decide whether or not they should feel guilty, and by the time they’ve done all that it isn’t fun any more—like having to explain the punch line of a joke.
Quant knew that what he was supposed to do, upon discovery of such a planet, was radio back his coordinates and a description of the planet, along with the automatic information from the Planet Ayalysis tapes, which were recording automatically, or had he remembered to turn them on? All this so that in case he died or got lost at least his initial discovery would not be lost to science. And also because if he failed to report in later, and someone should notice it, and if there were a ship happening to be going nearby (an unlikely eventuality), rescue might possibly be contemplated. Mostly rescue was too expensive, but there was always hope.
So, to forestall the possibility of an unwelcome rescue, Quant took the precaution of making sure he hadn’t switched on any communications equipment by mistake.
And prepared to descend into the fulminating colors and shapes of the wicked planet Chromata—for he named it Chromata.
Chromatose, he thought, gazing down through the clear atmosphere. I am becoming chromatose.
Quant checked the planetary analysis—which showed, for one thing, that the planet did not exist and for another that the atmosphere was deficient in oxygen.
Still, there was oxygen (some) and atmosphere and nothing poisonous to the lungs, so Quant reentered his ship—with some little difficulty as he found the wind had blown both he and it about a little—and removed his clumsy suit.
He inserted an oxygen capsule into his saphena magna, managing, because he’d had plenty of practice, to spill no blood at all, and he closed the temnomy smoothly on the vein of his ankle and again on his epidermis.
It was a very useful thing to have, this temnomy. Observing suitable sterility, one could insinuate medication into the bloodstream without needles, and the opening and closure were smooth and painless, the flesh binding like the closure on a skinsuit. It was also—the occasion for this does sometimes arise in the life of an adventurer—a suitable spot for quick-acting poison—quicker and less distasteful than swallowing something or cutting something.
Quant then strapped on his pack, which was an ea
sy enough process because he and the contents of his ship were behaving as though they were in free fall—which, according to the instruments they were not. Instruments, however, have their limitations, it being a tricky business to define stasis, since a ship stationary on a planet is moving in the direction and with the speed of the planets rotation, and also its revolution, not to speak of its acceleration with respect to its galaxy, and the acceleration of its galaxy with respect to the rest of existence, and other unthinkable things.
Quant stepped out of his ship again and realized thoroughly that he was not going to fall to the surface of the planet. Within a hundred miles of the planet, watching its slow, color-twinkling rotation beneath him, he was not falling to it.
The planet Erx, which he had considered the living end, was no precedent. Indeed, he now realized the planet Erx was humanoid.
The planet Erx was simply very tenuous. But this fact did not make it register non-existent on the instruments. It had mass and gravity one-tenth that of earth—though of course the curious behavior of the inhabitants of Erx . . . but more of that later.
Gravity—of course. Quant laughed aloud and called himself several bad names—a habit acquired by lone travelers who have no companion to so designate.
“You sib of a Grilch!” he shouted. (This filthy expression came from a creech house in the lower Venusian swamp area.) “You postprandial trachelesthial . . .”
The planet must be without gravity, which was why his instruments did not recognize its existence.
Then how did it hold its atmosphere? Not speak of the anargent glitter of sinuosities that one would assume were the various shapes of planetary water.
The atmosphere had weight—at least it had resistance—though musn’t all matter? Perhaps the gravity was in the matter on the planet, the extraneous matter attracting the planet unto itself rather than the usual reverse situation.
In which case if there were any attracting to be done, it would have to be done by Quant. And since the ships instruments had no provision for landing on a non-gravitic planet, it being difficult, in the absence of gravity, to tell which way is down and to ascertain when bottom is reached, Quant would have to land the ship himself. Manually. That is, he would have to tug it down with his hands.
Whereupon Quant lowered the ship to within fifty feet of the surface—as low as he dared chance a possible crash—and got out of the ship and drifted the rest of the way down by squirting compressed oxygen at the sky and pulling the ship along behind him by a handhold.
Set amidst a confounding kakophany of color, his senses disordered by an atmosphere of danger from moving forms—entelechally alarming, not red but of red meaning—Quant felt his space ship tugged at, and winds blowing, and wondered if he would have to tie it by a string to his hand and tug it around after him like a toy balloon.
Something was tugging at it. Not blowing winds.
Something pulled at the ship, and, now more strongly, Quant dragged along behind.
He was beginning to be very much afraid. Not only for his human soul, which is really rather vague and usually disappears on sunny mornings, but for his life. What weapons would he need., here where the Humanities did not apply? Not, no doubt, the ones he had.
He shook at his head, trying to clear it of color, so as to be able to see the moving shapes around him. Color and form should be two different things. But for him they blurred here. He fought to open his mind as in nightmares he’d fought to open weighted eyes.
Sounds, too. There was a sursurration of sounds, whistling softly in waves and having a physical touch about them, as though they roughed the hairs of his body.
Quant shut his eyes tight and tried to clear his mind of everything he’d learned between the ages of one and three. This is not easy to do, but since Quant had always accepted each day as an act of faith, he now had only to shift into reverse to come forth with an act of disbelief.
Now his mind felt clear.
He opened his eyes to see it was mostly he that was moving rather than the landscape.
And an interesting landscape it was, if rather unsettling.
But feeling he could perceive his surroundings, and possibly even give names to classes of things (a sort of magic way to control them), Quant lost the section of fear closest to his bowels and proceeded to concentrate on what was pulling at his ship and how to stop it.
“Ho there!” he called (what does one say in such a situation?).
Immediately he was stopped with a bump that almost knocked him out and looking around the ship he noticed that the landscape rushed away in a ten-foot circle around him.
“Ho there!” he called again, and the landscape retreated further, rather in the fashion of Alice Ben Bolt.
Had it been this vegetation, or whatever, dragging him along?
He walked carefully about the ship, remembering to behave as though he were in free fall, and filing away for future cogitation the fact that the landscape was not all on the ground. It floated at various levels and the interesting cloud formations were more likely to drop ripe fruit on his head than rain.
Though of course they wouldn’t drop. They’d just hang there. Which led Quant to wonder what they grew on or in, if not soil. Airliving, perhaps.
The sursurrationed loudened and trembled and Quant got the definite impression he was approaching it. Whatever had been dragging him along was also making that sound.
Quant held his thumb on the button of his gun.
“Stick ’em up!” he said, coming around the curve of the ship and thinking that one thing he had never learned was how to use a gun in free fall.
He came then upon a structure of Euclidean nicety which was simultaneously untelescoping vertically and spreading to die ground laterally. Wire-like projections hummed and trembled. Spreading slowly for about a twenty-foot square it began to sink into the ground and as the wires went down the humming stopped all at once, as though in the middle of a phrase, leaving Quant feeling as though he’d gone deaf on a dominant seventh.
Quant examined the skin of his ship with a contraction of the intestines—other people may feel things in their hearts, but Quant was more likely to feel them lower down—for some sort of damage had been done and since it was of a subtle nature he wouldn’t know enough about it to fix it. The color and texture had been changed on a spot forward of the jets. The metal was—not exactly pitted—waffled, or plaided, in a tiny pattern left inlaid with acerulian colors.
Also, when he moved back a bit to see if any other damage had been done, the ship leaned back on its tail and stuck its nose up into the air, and stayed that way.
It had acquired a bit of gravity.
“Well, God damn,” Quant thought, and he got out a sandwich. Not really a sandwich, of course, but a compressed capsule which he hoped there was sufficient oxygen in the air to make into what is euphemistically referred to as a “meal.”
There was, and he sat down on a convenient boulder to eat (drink) it and this required a bit of wrestling because he’d forgotten about the null-grav business.
At least, was his first thought, my ship is anchored.
And I, was his second thought, feel different and a little heavier, at least not quite so floaty—does one collect gravity here?
The air in his lungs, no doubt, leaving tiny deposits of aerial matter with its peculiar gravity. And dusts of some sort on his skin suit—though his skin suit was supposed to repel dust and light matter of all sorts. Still, light matter would not exist here, so it would be heavy matter.
He looked his skin suit over and decided it was making him itch, so he took it off. Actually what he wanted was to feel the planet he had been hearing and seeing.
He should have worried about himself, because two senses are enough for most people to sightsee with. One investigates with a couple of senses and a lot of instruments.
But what he was doing was not investigating. He was abandoning himself to an inconceivably alien world and not being overly intellect
ual, he found mere mental abandonment unsatisfying.
And he was not accustomed to abandoning himself with his clothes on.
His cigarette burned badly but he drew at it anyway and saw that the smoke changed color in the air, and that the air was inhabited, too. Not, like the planet Erx, with barely visible beings who seemed solid only as to their edges—and it was because of their edges that he was forced to observe their disgusting . . . but Quant was in no mood to contemplate the disgusting customs of the planet Erx.
The air on Chromata was gay and shapely with swarms of vegetation—or perhaps dust or animal matter or both or all—that undulated and danced and showed the shape of the wind. And sometimes they rose an spread and draped across the sun, and sometimes they spread across the ground in ropes or sheets and when Quant went to grab one, to discover the nature of its feel, it wrapped itself around him and tickled his nostrils and made him sneeze.
Quant laughed and looked at his watch, which was always correct and which ran on the pulse of his blood and because of his relatively calm nature and lack of disease generally was pretty close to solar time. It told him when to eat and when to replenish oxygen and when to sleep—all things an explorer must frequently do in minimal ways. It also told him approximately what time it was relative to other people, since we all keep approximately the same time.
It told him he had a couple of hours left on his oxygen, and he laughed into the wind and let the sheet-like Chromatan thing slip more tightly about him.
It was an odd feeling. Rather the way a woman must feel when she’s wearing a satin drape-dress. It must slither across her skin as she moves.
Quant unwound the thing from him—it was quite heavy—and watched it sheet off in the wind.
It wafted toward the right and reached an orange sticklike projection that leaned up from the earth. And it wound around the angular body and digested it, down to the ground, so that the geometrical thing no longer existed. And the sheetlike thing changed color and divided into two and blew off in a sparkle.
Animal, Quant asked himself, vegetable, or mineral?
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 24