American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Dak stopped talking; for a moment there was no sound but the keening of the thin Martian air past the roof. A human being can walk possibly two hundred yards on Mars without an oxygen mask, if he is in good condition. I believe I read of a case where a man walked almost half a mile before he died. I glanced at the trip meter and saw that we were about twentythree kilometers from Goddard City.

  The prisoner said slowly, “Honest, I don’t know anything about it. I was just paid to crash the car.”

  “We’ll try to stimulate your memory.” The gates of the Martian city were just ahead of us; Dak started slowing the car. “Here’s where you get out, Chief. Rog, better take your gun and relieve the Chief of our guest.”

  “Right, Dak.” Rog moved up by me, jabbed the man in the ribs—again with a bare knuckle. I moved out of the way. Dak braked the car to a halt, stopping right in front of the gates.

  “Four minutes to spare,” he said happily. “This is a nice car. I wish I owned it. Rog, ease up a touch and give me room.”

  Clifton did so, Dak chopped the driver expertly on the side of his neck with the edge of his hand; the man went limp. “That will keep him quiet while you get clear. Can’t have any unseemly disturbance under the eyes of the nest. Let’s check time.”

  We did so. I was about three and a half minutes ahead of the deadline. “You are to go in exactly on time, you understand? Not ahead, not behind, but on the dot.”

  “That’s right,” Clifton and I answered in chorus.

  “Thirty seconds to walk up the ramp, maybe. What do you want to do with the three minutes you have left?”

  I sighed. “Just get my nerve back.”

  “Your nerve is all right. You didn’t miss a trick back there. Cheer up, old son. Two hours from now you can head for home, with your pay burning holes in your pocket. We’re on the last lap.”

  “I hope so. It’s been quite a strain. Uh, Dak?”

  “Yes?”

  “Come here a second.” I got out of the car, motioned him to come with me a short distance away. “What happens if I make a mistake—in there?”

  “Eh?” Dak looked surprised, then laughed a little too heartily. “You won’t make a mistake. Penny tells me you’ve got it down Jo-block perfect.”

  “Yes, but suppose I slip?”

  “You won’t slip. I know how you feel; I felt the same way on my first solo grounding. But when it started, I was so busy doing it I didn’t have time to do it wrong.”

  Clifton called out, his voice thin in thin air, “Dak! Are you watching the time?”

  “Gobs of time. Over a minute.”

  “Mr. Bonforte!” It was Penny’s voice. I turned and went back to the car. She got out and put out her hand. “Good luck, Mr. Bonforte.”

  “Thanks, Penny.”

  Rog shook hands and Dak clapped me on the shoulder. “Minus thirty-five seconds. Better start.”

  I nodded and started up the ramp. It must have been within a second or two of the exact, appointed time when I reached the top, for the mighty gates rolled back as I came to them. I took a deep breath and cursed that damned air mask.

  Then I took my stage.

  It doesn’t make any difference how many times you do it, that first walk on as the curtain goes up on the first night of any run is a breath-catcher and a heart-stopper. Sure, you know your sides. Sure, you’ve asked the manager to count the house. Sure, you’ve done it all before. No matter—when you first walk out there and know that all those eyes are on you, waiting for you to speak, waiting for you to do something—maybe even waiting for you to go up on your lines, brother, you feel it. This is why they have prompters.

  I looked out and saw my audience and I wanted to run. I had stage fright for the first time in thirty years.

  The siblings of the nest were spread out before me as far as I could see. There was an open lane in front of me, with thousands on each side, set close together as asparagus. I knew that the first thing I must do was slow-march down the center of that lane, clear to the far end, to the ramp leading down into the inner nest.

  I could not move.

  I said to myself, “Look, boy, you’re John Joseph Bonforte. You’ve been here dozens of times before. These people are your friends. You’re here because you want to be here—and because they want you here. So march down that aisle. Tum tum te tum! ‘Here comes the bride!’ ”

  I began to feel like Bonforte again. I was Uncle Joe Bonforte, determined to do this thing perfectly—for the honor and welfare of my own people and my own planet—and for my friends the Martians. I took a deep breath and one step.

  That deep breath saved me; it brought me that heavenly fragrance. Thousands on thousands of Martians packed close together—it smelled to me as if somebody had dropped and broken a whole case of Jungle Lust. The conviction that I smelled it was so strong that I involuntarily glanced back to see if Penny had followed me in. I could feel her handclasp warm in my palm.

  I started limping down that aisle, trying to make it about the speed a Martian moves on his own planet. The crowd closed in behind me. Occasionally kids would get away from their elders and skitter out in front of me. By “kids” I mean post-fission Martians, half the mass and not much over half the height of an adult. They are never out of the nest and we are inclined to forget that there can be little Martians. It takes almost five years, after fission, for a Martian to regain his full size, have his brain fully restored, and get all of his memory back. During this transition he is an idiot studying to be a moron. The gene rearrangement and subsequent regeneration incident to conjugation and fission put him out of the running for a long time. One of Bonforte’s spools was a lecture on the subject, accompanied by some not very good amateur stereo.

  The kids, being cheerful idiots, are exempt from propriety and all that that implies. But they are greatly loved.

  Two of the kids, of the same and smallest size and looking just alike to me, skittered out and stopped dead in front of me, just like a foolish puppy in traffic. Either I stopped or I ran them down.

  So I stopped. They moved even closer, blocking my way completely, and started sprouting pseudo limbs while chittering at each other. I could not understand them at all. Quickly they were plucking at my clothes and snaking their patty-paws into my sleeve pockets.

  The crowd was so tight that I could hardly go around them. I was stretched between two needs. In the first place they were so darn cute that I wanted to see if I didn’t have a sweet tucked away somewhere for them—but in a still firster place was the knowledge that the adoption ceremony was timed like a ballet. If I didn’t get on down that street, I was going to commit the classic sin against propriety made famous by Kkkahgral the Younger himself.

  But the kids were not about to get out of my way. One of them had found my watch.

  I sighed and was almost overpowered by the perfume. Then I made a bet with myself. I bet that baby-kissing was a Galactic Universal and that it took precedence even over Martian propriety. I got on one knee, making myself about the height they were, and fondled them for a few moments, patting them and running my hands down their scales.

  Then I stood up and said carefully, “That is all now. I must go,” which used up a large fraction of my stock of Basic Martian.

  The kids clung to me but I moved them carefully and gently aside and went on down the double line, hurrying to make up for the time I had lost. No life wand burned a hole in my back. I risked a hope that my violation of propriety had not yet reached the capital offense level. I reached the ramp leading down into the inner nest and started on down.

  * * * * * * * * * * *

  That line of asterisks represents the adoption ceremony. Why? Because it is limited to members of the Kkkah nest. It is a family matter.

  Put it this way: A Mormon may have very close gentile friends—but does that friendship get a gentile inside the Temple at Salt Lake City? It never has and it never will. Martians visit very freely back and forth between their nests—but a Martian
enters the inner nest only of his own family. Even his conjugate-spouses are not thus privileged. I have no more right to tell the details of the adoption ceremony than a lodge brother has to be specific about ritual outside the lodge.

  Oh, the rough outlines do not matter, since they are the same for any nest, just as my part was the same for any candidate. My sponsor—Bonforte’s oldest Martian friend, Kkkahrrreash— met me at the door and threatened me with a wand. I demanded that he kill me at once were I guilty of any breach. To tell the truth, I did not recognize him, even though I had studied a picture of him. But it had to be him because ritual required it.

  Having thus made clear that I stood four-square for Motherhood, the Home, Civic Virtue, and never missing Sunday school, I was permitted to enter. ’Rrreash conducted me around all the stations, I was questioned and I responded. Every word, every gesture, was as stylized as a classical Chinese play, else I would not have stood a chance. Most of the time I did not know what they were saying and half of the time I did not understand my own replies; I simply knew my cues and the responses. It was not made easier by the low light level the Martians prefer; I was groping around like a mole.

  I played once with Hawk Mantell, shortly before he died, after he was stone-deaf. There was a trouper! He could not even use a hearing device because the eighth nerve was dead. Part of the time he could cue by lips but that is not always possible. He directed the production himself and he timed it perfectly. I have seen him deliver a line, walk away—then whirl around and snap out a retort to a line that he had never heard, precisely on the timing.

  This was like that. I knew my part and I played it. If they blew it, that was their lookout.

  But it did not help my morale that there were never less than half a dozen wands leveled at me the whole time. I kept telling myself that they wouldn’t burn me down for a slip. After all, I was just a poor stupid human being and at the very least they would give me a passing mark for effort. But I didn’t believe it.

  After what seemed like days—but was not, since the whole ceremony times exactly one ninth of Mars’ rotation—after an endless time, we ate. I don’t know what and perhaps it is just as well. It did not poison me.

  After that the elders made their speeches, I made my acceptance speech in answer, and they gave me my name and my wand. I was a Martian.

  I did not know how to use the wand and my name sounded like a leaky faucet, but from that instant on it was my legal name on Mars and I was legally a blood member of the most aristocratic family on the planet—exactly fifty-two hours after a ground hog down on his luck had spent his last half Imperial buying a drink for a stranger in the bar of Casa Mañana.

  I guess this proves that one should never pick up strangers.

  I got out as quickly as possible. Dak had made up a speech for me in which I claimed proper necessity for leaving at once and they let me go. I was nervous as a man upstairs in a sorority house because there was no longer ritual to guide me. I mean to say even casual social behavior was still hedged around with airtight and risky custom and I did not know the moves. So I recited my excuse and headed out. ’Rrreash and another elder went with me and I chanced playing with another pair of the kids when we were outside—or maybe the same pair. Once I reached the gates the two elders said good-by in squeaky English and let me go out alone; the gates closed behind me and I reswallowed my heart.

  The Rolls was waiting where they had let me out; I hurried down, a door opened, and I was surprised to see that Penny was in it alone. But not displeased. I called out, “Hi, Curly Top! I made it!”

  “I knew you would.”

  I gave a mock sword salute with my wand and said, “Just call me Kkkahjjjerrr”—spraying the front rows with the second syllable.

  “Be careful with that thing!” she said nervously.

  I slid in beside her on the front seat and asked, “Do you know how to use one of these things?” The reaction was setting in and I felt exhausted but gay; I wanted three quick drinks and a thick steak, then to wait up for the critics’ reviews.

  “No. But do be careful.”

  “I think all you have to do is to press it here,” which I did, and there was a neat two-inch hole in the windshield and the car wasn’t pressurized any longer.

  Penny gasped. I said, “Gee, I’m sorry. I’ll put it away until Dak can coach me.”

  She gulped. “It’s all right. Just be careful where you point it.” She started wheeling the car and I found that Dak was not the only one with a heavy hand on the damper.

  Wind was whistling in through the hole I had made. I said, “What’s the rush? I need some time to study my lines for the press conference. Did you bring them? And where are the others?” I had forgotten completely the driver we had grabbed; I had not thought about him from the time the gates of the nest opened.

  “No. They couldn’t come.”

  “Penny, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” I was wondering if I could possibly take a press conference without coaching. Perhaps I could tell them a little about the adoption; I wouldn’t have to fake that.

  “It’s Mr. Bonforte—they’ve found him.”

  VI

  I had not noticed until then that she had not once called me “Mr. Bonforte.” She could not, of course, for I was no longer he; I was again Lorrie Smythe, that actor chap they had hired to stand in for him.

  I sat back and sighed, and let myself relax. “So it’s over at last —and we got away with it.” I felt a great burden lift off me; I had not known how heavy it was until I put it down. Even my “lame” leg stopped aching. I reached over and patted Penny’s hand on the wheel and said in my own voice, “I’m glad it’s over. But I’m going to miss having you around, pal. You’re a trouper. But even the best run ends and the company breaks up. I hope I’ll see you again sometime.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “I suppose Dak has arranged some shenanigan to keep me under cover and sneak me back into the Tom Paine?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice sounded odd and I gave her a quick glance and saw that she was crying. My heart gave a skip. Penny crying? Over us separating? I could not believe it and yet I wanted to. One might think that, between my handsome features and cultivated manners, women would find me irresistible, but it is a deplorable fact that all too many of them have found me easy to resist. Penny had seemed to find it no effort at all.

  “Penny,” I said hastily, “why all the tears, hon? You’ll wreck this car.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Well—put me in it. What’s wrong? You told me they had got him back; you didn’t tell me anything else.” I had a sudden horrid but logical suspicion. “He was alive—wasn’t he?”

  “Yes—he’s alive—but, oh, they’ve hurt him!” She started to sob and I had to grab the wheel.

  She straightened up quickly. “Sorry.”

  “Want me to drive?”

  “I’ll be all right. Besides, you don’t know how—I mean you aren’t supposed to know how to drive.”

  “Huh? Don’t be silly. I do know how and it no longer matters that——” I broke off, suddenly realizing that it might still matter. If they had roughed up Bonforte so that it showed, then he could not appear in public in that shape—at least not only fifteen minutes after being adopted into the Kkkah nest. Maybe I would have to take that press conference and depart publicly, while Bonforte would be the one they would sneak aboard. Well, all right—hardly more than a curtain call. “Penny, do Dak and Rog want me to stay in character for a bit? Do I play to the reporters? Or don’t I?”

  “I don’t know. There wasn’t time.”

  We were already approaching the stretch of godowns by the field, and the giant bubble domes of Goddard City were in sight. “Penny, slow this car down and talk sense. I’ve got to have my cues.”

  The driver had talked—I neglected to ask whether or not the bobby-pin treatment had been used. He had then been turned loose to walk back but had not been deprived of h
is mask; the others had barreled back to Goddard City, with Dak at the wheel. I felt lucky to have been left behind; voyageurs should not be allowed to drive anything but spaceships.

  They went to the address the driver had given them, in Old Town under the original bubble. I gathered that it was the sort of jungle every port has had since the Phoenicians sailed around the shoulder of Africa, a place of released transportees, prostitutes, monkey-pushers, rangees, and other dregs—a neighborhood where policemen travel only in pairs.

  The information they had squeezed out of the driver had been correct but a few minutes out of date. The room had housed the prisoner, certainly, for there was a bed in it which seemed to have been occupied continuously for at least a week, a pot of coffee was still hot—and wrapped in a towel on a shelf was an old-fashioned removable denture which Clifton identified as belonging to Bonforte. But Bonforte himself was missing and so were his captors.

  They had left there with the intention of carrying out the original plan, that of claiming that the kidnaping had taken place immediately after the adoption and putting pressure on Boothroyd by threatening to appeal to the Nest of Kkkah. But they had found Bonforte, had simply run across him in the street before they left Old Town—a poor old stumblebum with a week’s beard, dirty and dazed. The men had not recognized him, but Penny had known him and made them stop.

  She broke into sobs again as she told me this part and we almost ran down a truck train snaking up to one of the loading docks.

  A reasonable reconstruction seemed to be that the laddies in the second car—the one that was to crash us—had reported back, whereupon the faceless leaders of our opponents had decided that the kidnaping no longer served their purposes. Despite the arguments I had heard about it, I was surprised that they had not simply killed him; it was not until later that I understood that what they had done was subtler, more suited to their purposes, and much crueler than mere killing.