I found him working open mike night at a cheap club down in the Ginzorninplad district. He’d just gotten into town, worked his way here from his home-world aboard a worn-out old tub of a bulk freighter, and he didn’t have much more than the clothes on his back. I watched his act and then I caught him backstage and signed him up, just like that. And said some very sincere prayers to Hnb’hnb’hnb for granting me the privilege.
I got him a few local gigs and he did just fine, even got some good ink from the critics. But you know this town; an outsider has a tough time getting accepted. Especially an outsider from, and I don’t mean this in any derogatory way, a different-looking race. I hate to say that, but it’s true.
So when this opening turned up for a long offworld tour, I advised him to go for it. Oh, it wasn’t much of a booking—the world was a pretty backward sort of place, off in a distant arm of the galaxy where hardly anybody ever went even to visit, and the pay was worse than lousy.
But I didn’t really have anything else for him at the moment; things were slow, all the best clubs were booked up solid. And I figured this was a chance for him to get some experience, develop his material, and practice his technique out in the sticks without having to worry about bombing because even if he did have a bad night nobody who mattered would ever hear about it. Meanwhile I could work on lining up something better for him.
Well, what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time, I should hit myself repeatedly with the nearest blunt object.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that he went into the sandbox or anything like that. On the contrary, they loved his act—or at least they loved him; right away, almost as soon as he arrived, they started making a big fuss over him. In no time at all he was playing to packed houses.
You understand, he was sending back regular reports, keeping me up on what was going on, and every time I heard from him, he sounded more amazed. People followed him around on the street, came up to him wanting to meet him and trying to touch him, and before long he even had his own fan club. In fact there were about a dozen of them who took to traveling around with him, seeing to his needs, just like he’s a big superstar.
But what was really strange was the way the audiences reacted to his act. Nobody ever laughed. He’d do his funniest routines, stuff that would make a Rhrr laugh, and they’d just sit there staring at him with these very serious faces and nod and look at each other and nod some more, like he’d just said something wise and profound.
He tried everything. He even tried dumping his own material, since they didn’t seem to get it, and doing corny old gags about farmers and animal herders and fishermen, thinking maybe they just weren’t ready for sophisticated modern humor. Didn’t make a bit of difference. They still came to see him, more and more all the time, but they still didn’t laugh.
And this was starting to make him crazy, as you can imagine. He got so desperate he started doing magic tricks. Now I mean that’s pretty bad, when a talented performer has to reach that low. What next, I thought, he’s going to take up juggling? But these hicks absolutely ate it up. They liked the tricks even better than the comic routines; the crowds started getting really huge.
Finally the time came for his debut at the big city— well, the biggest in that part of that particular world, it wouldn’t have made a slum neighborhood here— and off he went, hoping the city audiences would be a little more hip.
He made something of an entrance, too; his twelve roadies did a really great job of getting the word out, making sure there was a big crowd to welcome him when he arrived in town. By the time he did his first show, the turnout was so big they had to hold it outdoors on a mountainside, where he gave possibly his greatest performance ever. Still no yucks, but he thought he saw a few of them smiling a little toward the end.
So things were looking up; and so my boy didn’t think anything of it, a few nights later, when a bunch of people showed up, right after dinner, and wanted him to come with them. Some kind of fan thing, he thought, and he said sure, and went along without argument, though some of his entourage tried to talk him out of it.
And when they got where they were going, he still didn’t tumble to what was happening. Not even when they started bringing up the lumber and nails. In fact he gave them a hand. He figured they were getting ready to build a stage for him. There were some cops standing around but he assumed they were just security.
By the time he found out different, it was too late.
If I told you what they did to him, you would not sleep tonight and you would have dreams for years, just as I did when I heard about it. So I think I better not go into the details. Enough to say it was a terrible, terrible thing and I’ve never heard of anything quite like it, even on the most barbaric worlds.
The shock and the pain were so great that it was three planetary rotations before he could pull himself together enough to activate his recovery circuits and get out of there. He came back here and told me what had happened—I had naturally been worried sick— and then, despite all my pleas and reassurances, he got on the next available ship back to his homeworld, and as far as I know he never got on stage again. I understand he went into the family construction business. Such a waste, and I can’t help feeling responsible.
But there was one thing I want to tell you about, because it illustrates just what kind of a person he was. Right after he got his body systems working again, he was just about to send the emergency beam-up signal when he thought of something he wanted to do. And as bad as he wanted out of that place—and who can blame him?—and as stiff and sore as he was, he stayed around long enough to put in a final appearance to his original fan club, and do a little farewell routine just for them. Now is that class or what?
You can see why it broke my heart—no, both of them—to see him go.
Well. So much for my little reminiscences. I’m sure you’ve got a whole list of questions.
So ask.
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LIFE HAPPENS by Ralph Roberts
L
IFE HAPPENS. It’s not my fault. / When it started, I was looking at stars. The stars within my own body to be precise; so small, so many, so beautiful, so clean of contaminating Life in all their hundreds of billions! I perceived them through magnifying fields of my own devising. Bright and pristine in their many colors—the planets orbiting around them existing without blemish. No infections in me, I set a fine example. It’s good for business.
I never should have taken the call.
“DoctorJ Doctor. Huh? Huh? I have another referral for you and this one is loaded! Another referral. Is a very, very good referral. Needs big help. Has much credit. Can pay lots. Reward. I get reward?”
Quarble, he’s a dwarf—a dwarf in both size and intellect. I move my perception, focus on him. He’s dancing around me as usual, sucking up to the great physician—well, so I am and it is well that he should. He has his uses. He’ll do any menial task and he does have an uncanny talent for finding patients. Some of them even pay their bills.
“Good one, good one, Doc!”
“Quarble, do NOT call me ‘Doc,’“ I said without real rancor—after all Quarble is Quarble and one should not fight that which is not worth changing.
“Sorry, sorry. Over there. Over there. He needs help. Charge lots, give Quarble some. Yes?”
I favor Quarble with a disapproving perception, but it fazes him not at all.
Quarble has been in my employ some few hundred millions of years to use units of time understood by Life (damn their slimy little, short-lived existences that I am so dedicated to eradicating). Quarble’s what they classify as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy and designated in their Messier catalog as MHO.
I know all too much about Life these days, or at least this one particularly nasty strain—lessons hard learned, but the fight is not over yet. I even know that the Messier method of cataloging us began in their year 1773 by one Charles Messier. Funny names, Life beings have—puny monikers to match their pun
y selves, not like ours. My name lilts through one’s grasp of reality, lovingly redolent of many hundreds of digits of prime numbers and mathematically expressed highly complex molecular chains.
“Reward, Doc, reward,” Quarble reminds.
“In a moment, Quarble,” I said, continuing to put away my force field tools and generally tidy up before exchanging perceptions with a potential patient.
Quarble does have a few good points, I must add. He is somewhat unique, being not your usual generic dwarf elliptical galaxy but one of a very few known dwarf spheroids and, to boot, brighter than most dwarf spheroids. Well, at least in light emitted.
Additionally, and in spite of his small size, Quarble, or MHO, has a remarkable system of eight globular star clusters in a halo around him. The brightest of these is called G73 by Life. Quarble is quite vain about all of that.
“Doc!”
“All right,” I said, hurrying.
I cast one final glance in a reflective field to check my appearance. I AM handsome. Life knows me as M31, the famous Andromeda galaxy. The Life unit Al-Sufi was aware of me about ad 905. Had I been aware of him at the time, he would be but a few drifting molecules of scorched gas now. I owe him, I really do. I owe all of Life. They have HACKED me off!
But I am a looker, I am.
The Life unit and famous astronomer William Her-shel wrote this of me in 1785:
“. . . undoubtedly the nearest of all the great nebulae . . . The brightest part of it approaches to the resolvable nebulosity, and begins to shew a faint red colour; which, from many observations on the colour of and magnitude of nebulae . . . There is a very considerable, broad, pretty faint, small nebula [MHO] near it; my Sister [Caroline] discovered it August 27, 1783, with a Newtonian 2-feet sweeper. It shews the same faint colour with the great one, and is, no doubt, in the neighbourhood of it . . .”
Yes, Quarble is always horning in, bumbling about and getting in the way.
“Doc! Doc! Doc!”
“Where is the patient, dear Quarble?” I asked politely, now in the mode of the highly respected physician that I was until Life tripped me up and left me looking foolish. For THAT, they shall PAY!
He throws his perception but a short way.
“Where?” I ask, seeing only our neighbor, the odd one. Mostly we just ignore him, but I hear he has been highly successful in his field, something to do with confections, nothing healthy that I would consume, but many a galaxy likes a bit of sweet nebulosity now and again.
“Him? You’re kidding!”
“Yep, yep, yep, no, no, no,” Quarble affirmed.
I sighed. Never ask Quarble more than one question at a time.
As to the neighbor, I’ve never liked the guy, never had much to do with him. But a patient’s a patient and I did swear an oath of healing so very long ago. I projected a smiling and confident perception to him. Better I should have turned and expanded away at best speed. But how was I to know the extent of the infection that still racks his body?
“May I help you?” I ask.
He replied with a torrent of ailments and symptoms, a few of which I sensed as legitimate and . . . disconcerting. Especially the constant migraines he was now suffering. It was all too familiar and all too ominous.
“Say ‘ahh,’ “ I said, pushing a quick view field into his mass.
“Ugh!” escaped from me involuntarily. Not the most reassuring manner for a healer to project, but I had never seen an infestation so horribly progressed as showed on my instrument. Inside him swarmed, teemed, slid, slithered Life in incredible numbers. Only a blur of activity on the rudimentary examination device I was using, but enough to cause me great concern.
I swatted Quarble’s nosy perception away and reached out to assemble more powerful diagnostic and treatment fields. No time to waste in an emergency case like this! The guy should have come to me sooner, a LOT sooner. Well, it was going to be nasty, but I always won. ... At least, at one time, I always won. Cursed LIFE!
As my talented and nimble manipulative fields prepared the drastic but necessary medical procedures, I examined the patient visually. From the outside, he looks healthy enough, a handsome enough spiral galaxy. No signs of the rot within. He’s larger than normal, almost a giant. In fact, almost as large as I am and I’m the largest galaxy in this neighborhood.
I spared a glance to one of my instruments. Yes, a healthy male, about 15 billion years old. Good star count—somewhere around 200 billion to 400 billion at first guess, the instrument will refine that shortly as the processing completes.
“Is he a goner, Doc? Dead? A dead one?”
“SHUT UP, you idiot!” I said, but the patient is in too much pain to pay attention to Quarble. Quarble has all the finesse of an imploding black hole, but he’s cheaper than hiring a trained nurse.
I pushed my manipulators harder, feeling a real sense of urgency now, but continued the look over. All these observations give a physician the data needed for effective treatment of an infection. Usually they do, anyway.
Hmmm, I noted in my treatment log. The patient has a good distribution of hydrogen clouds, what the Life unit Hubble typed as a Sb or Sc galaxy. Which means he has both a pronounced disk component yet exhibits a spiral structure, and a prominent nuclear region. The latter is part of a notable bulge/halo component.
“What does it mean, Doc? Is he sick, is that what it says?”
I abstractedly brushed Quarble’s perception away from the log and thought about what other descriptive facts to add.
“DOCTOR?” the patient said, moaning.
“Just a moment, I’m preparing a procedure that will help you. Nothing to worry about.”
See, doctors he to patients.
“Will it hurt, Doctor?”
Of course it will, it will hurt like hell. He’s too far gone for anything that would not hurt. “No, not a bit,” I said. See above comment about lies. “Er . . . you might feel a slight sting, just a tiny bit of discomfort,” I modified, feeling just a little guilty because I was planning on unleashing several hundred supernovas within his body. No half measures when Life is so virulently established. He’s going to be spewing fire from all orifices!
Too bad. Like I’ve already said, he’s not a bad looking guy—not as handsome as me, but so few are. I examine his spiral arms and look inside his body again. A normally hale and hearty mix of interstellar matter, diffuse nebulae, and young stars. Good growth patterns with open star clusters emerging from this matter. But he’s been partaking a bit too much of his own confectionery. His bulge component is rife with old stars and fatty globular clusters; very concentrated toward his center.
I see some supernovae have occurred in the past; spectacular events to Life units, but nothing unusual here in frequency or magnitude—just one of the ways our bodies have of keeping infection down. But . . . speaking of spectacular ... I was planning and preparing to give THESE Life units something to REALLY gawk at. In the few brief moments left to them, that is.
“You sure it won’t hurt?” the patient asked again, nervously.
“No, no—not a bit,” I lied.
The instrumentation had gathered vast amounts of data now, giving me all the information needed to proceed. Even the Life units’ many communications among themselves were analyzed and interpreted and a comprehensive history presented. All absurdly simple— killing infection, after all, is not brain surgery.
Still, this case was very advanced and the patient not at all likely to survive it. “About payment,” I said.
The necessary transaction was concluded, the patient desperate and making no demur at my exorbitant rate. It’s the very best time to ask for your fee—wait until after the cure and they haggle or fail to survive, which is the ultimate negotiating ploy.
Quarble and I continued, perceiving all the data now spread across the perception-rendering screen on one of my force terminals, expanded out to the size of a galaxy itself. Every bit of datum required there for our instant reference. Well, at l
east I understood it—you never knew with Quarble, but he did surprise me at times.
“Bad, Doc, bad,” he actually whispered. “Worse, the worst I’ve ever seen.
“Yes,” I said just as quietly, “in fact, I’ve only seen or heard of one case with a greater infection.”
“Who? Who?”
“In a body we dissected in medical school. Already long dead, of course, and the Life that caused it, too. But you could see how it ravaged her before she succumbed. Nasty little buggers, Life!”
“Fast, fast, Doc. Hard to stomp them!”
Quarble, as usual, was stating the obvious.
As I flexed my manipulator fields and prepared for surgical entry into the patient, I reflected on the real problem we face in fighting infection, speed! Life is quick. The time scales they operate on are far more compressed than ours . . . Living for hundreds of billions of their years, we tend to move and think a good deal slower then them. When means Life can explode into existence and become technologically advanced in what to us true beings is little more than a short nap. A mere blink to us is hundreds of years for them. We must be ever vigilant to avoid such infections. My patient was not and is now paying that price.
“My brain is SPLITTING, Doctor!” he moaned. “Do SOMETHING!”
Yes, therein lies the problem Life causes us. When they become sufficiently advanced, they devise methods of traveling and communicating faster than light. This dirty little strain of Life called their FTL radio “Karsen waves”—after its discoverer. But the problem is that the esoteric wavelengths enabling this faster than light communication are the SAME as we think on. Life’s inane and petty garble drives us crazy like— to use one of their own metaphors—a thousand heavy metal bands jamming all at once inside your brain with NO way of turning down the volume.
“DOCTOR!”
“Just a moment more,” I said, projecting my most reassuring perceptions to him. “We are now starting the procedure. . . . Ah . . . You might want to brace yourself, this might hurt somewhat.”
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