The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  Mercer, unbelieving, watched as the big man took two precious eggs from a cold chest, expertly broke them into a little pan and put the pan in the heat-field at the center of the table Mercer had awakened on.

  “Friend, eh?” B’dikkat grinned. “You’ll see I’m a good friend. When you go outside, remember that.”

  * * * *

  An hour later, Mercer did go outside.

  Strangely at peace with himself, he stood at the door. B’dikkat pushed him in a brotherly way, giving him a shove which was gentle enough to be an encouragement.

  “Don’t make me put on my lead suit, fellow.” Mercer had seen a suit, fully the size of an ordinary spaceship cabin, hanging on the wall of an adjacent room. “When I close this door, the outer one will open. Just walk on out.”

  “But what will happen?” said Mercer, the fear turning around in his stomach and making little grabs at his throat from the inside.

  “Don’t start that again,” said B’dikkat. For an hour he had fended off Mercer’s questions about the outside. A map? B’dikkat had laughed at the thought. Food? He said not to worry. Other people? They’d be there. Weapons? What for? B’dikkat had replied. Over and over again, B’dikkat had insisted that he was Mercer’s friend. What would happen to Mercer? The same that happened to everybody else.

  Mercer stepped out.

  Nothing happened. The day was cool. The wind moved gently against his toughened skin.

  Mercer looked around apprehensively.

  The mountainous body of Captain Alvarez occupied a good part of the landscape to the right. Mercer had no wish to get mixed up with that. He glanced back at the cabin. B’dikkat was not looking out of the window.

  Mercer walked slowly, straight ahead.

  There was a flash on the ground, no brighter than the glitter of sunlight on a fragment of glass. Mercer felt a sting on the thigh, as though a sharp instrument had touched him lightly. He brushed the place with his hand.

  It was as though the sky fell in.

  A pain—it was more than a pain: it was a living throb—ran from his hip to his foot on the right side. The throb reached up to his chest, robbing him of breath. He fell, and the ground hurt him. Nothing in the hospital-satellite had been like this. He lay in the open air, trying not to breathe, but he did breathe anyhow. Each time he breathed, the throb moved with his thorax. He lay on his back, looking at the sun. At last he noticed that the sun was violet-white.

  It was no use even thinking of calling. He had no voice. Tendrils of discomfort twisted within him. Since he could not stop breathing, he concentrated on taking air in the way that hurt him least. Gasps were too much work. Little tiny sips of air hurt him least.

  The desert around him was empty. He could not turn his head to look at the cabin. Is this it? he thought. Is an eternity of this the punishment of Shayol?

  There were voices near him.

  Two faces, grotesquely pink, looked down at him. They might have been human. The man looked normal enough, except for having two noses side by side. The woman was a caricature beyond belief. She had grown a breast on each cheek and a cluster of naked baby-like fingers hung limp from her forehead.

  “It’s a beauty,” said the woman, “a new one.”

  “Come along,” said the man.

  They lifted him to his feet. He did not have strength enough to resist. When he tried to speak to them a harsh cawing sound, like the cry of an ugly bird, came from his mouth.

  They moved with him efficiently. He saw that he was being dragged to the herd of pink things.

  As they approached, he saw that they were people. Better, he saw that they had once been people. A man with the beak of a flamingo was picking at his own body. A woman lay on the ground; she had a single head, but beside what seemed to be her original body, she had a boy’s naked body growing sideways from her neck. The boy-body, clean, new, paralytically helpless, made no movement other than shallow breathing. Mercer looked around. The only one of the group who was wearing clothing was a man with his overcoat on sideways. Mercer stared at him, finally realising that the man had two—or was it three?—stomachs growing on the outside of his abdomen. The coat held them in place. The transparent peritoneal wall looked fragile.

  “New one,” said his female captor. She and the two-nosed man put him down.

  * * * *

  The group lay scattered on the ground.

  Mercer lay in a state of stupor among them.

  An old man’s voice said, “I’m afraid they’re going to feed us pretty soon.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “It’s too early!”

  “Not again!” Protests echoed from the group.

  The old man’s voice went on, “Look, near the big toe of the mountain!”

  The desolate murmur in the group attested their confirmation of what he had seen.

  Mercer tried to ask what it was all about, but produced only a caw.

  A woman—was it a woman?—crawled over to him on her hands and knees. Beside her ordinary hands, she was covered with hands all over her trunk and halfway down her thighs. Some of the hands looked old and withered. Others were as fresh and pink as the baby-fingers on his captress’s face. The woman shouted at him, though it was not necessary to shout.

  “The dromozoa are coming. This time it hurts. When you get used to the place, you can dig in—”

  She waved at a group of mounds which surrounded the herd of people.

  “They’re dug in,” she said.

  Mercer cawed again.

  “Don’t you worry,” said the hand-covered woman, and gasped as a flash of light touched her.

  The lights reached Mercer too. The pain was like the first contact but more probing. Mercer felt his eyes widen as odd sensations within his body led to an inescapable conclusion: these lights, these things, these whatever-they-were, were feeding him and building him up.

  Their intelligence, if they had it, was not human, but their motives were clear. In between the stabs of pain he felt them fill his stomach, put water in his blood, draw water from his kidneys and bladder, massage his heart, move his lungs for him.

  Every single thing they did was well meant and beneficent in intent.

  And every single action hurt.

  Abruptly, like the lifting of a cloud of insects, they were gone. Mercer was aware of a noise somewhere outside—a brainless, bawling cascade of ugly noise. He started to look around. And the noise stopped.

  It had been himself, screaming. Screaming the ugly screams of a psychotic, a terrified drunk, an animal driven out of understanding or reason.

  When he stopped, he found he had his speaking voice again.

  A man came to him, naked like the others. There was a spike sticking through his head. The skin had healed around it on both sides. “Hello, fellow,” said the man with the spike.

  “Hello,” said Mercer. It was a foolishly commonplace thing to say in a place like this.

  “You can’t kill yourself,” said the man with the spike through his head.

  “Yes, you can,” said the woman, covered with hands.

  Mercer found that his first pain had disappeared. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You got a part,” said the man with the spike. “They’re always putting parts on us. After a while B’dikkat comes and cuts most of them off, except for the ones that ought to grow a little more. Like her,” he added, nodding at the woman who lay with the boy-body growing from her neck.

  “And that’s all?” said Mercer. “The stabs for the new parts and the stinging for the feeding.”

  “No,” said the man. “Sometimes they think we’re too cold and they fill our insides with fire. Or they think we’re too hot and they freeze us, nerve by nerve.”

  The woman with the boy-body called over, “And sometimes they think we’re unhappy, so they try t
o force us to be happy. I think that’s the worst of all.”

  Mercer stammered, “Are you people—I mean—are you the only herd?”

  The man with the spike coughed instead of laughing. “Herd! That’s funny. The land is full of people. Most of them dig in. We’re the ones who can still talk; we stay together for company. We get more turns with B’dikkat that way.”

  Mercer started to ask another question, but he felt the strength run out of him. The day had been too much.

  The ground rocked like a ship on water. The sky turned black. He felt someone catch him as he fell. He felt himself being stretched out on the ground. And then, mercifully and magically, he slept.

  CHAPTER Ill

  Within a week, he came to know the group well. They were an absent-minded bunch of people. Not one of them ever knew when a dromozoon might flash by and add another part. Mercer was not stung again, but the incision he had obtained just outside the cabin was hardening. Spike-head looked at it when Mercer modestly undid his belt and lowered the edge of his trouser-top so they could see the wound.

  “You’ve got a head,” he said. “A whole baby head. They’ll be glad to get that one upstairs when B’dikkat cuts it off you.”

  The group even tried to arrange his social life. They introduced him to the girl of the herd. She had grown one body after another, pelvis turning into shoulders and the pelvis below that turning into shoulders again until she was five people long. Her face was unmarred. She tried to be friendly to Mercer.

  He was so shocked by her that he dug himself into the soft, dry crumbly earth and stayed there for what seemed like a hundred years. He found later that it was less than a full day. When he came out, the long, many-bodied girl was waiting for him.

  “You didn’t have to come out just for me,” said she.

  Mercer shook the dirt off himself.

  He looked around. The violet sun was going down, and the sky was streaked with blues, deeper blues and trails of orange sunset.

  He looked back at her. “I didn’t get up for you. It’s no use lying there, waiting for the next time.”

  “I want to show you something,” she said. She pointed to a low hummock. “Dig that up.”

  Mercer looked at her. She seemed friendly. He shrugged and attacked the soil with his powerful claws. With tough skin and heavy digging-nails on the ends of his fingers, he found it was easy to dig like a dog. The earth cascaded beneath his busy hands. Something pink appeared down in the hole he had dug. He proceeded more carefully.

  He knew what it would be.

  It was. It was a man, sleeping. Extra arms grew down one side of his body in an orderly series. The other side looked normal.

  Mercer turned back to the many-bodied girl, who had writhed closer.

  “That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Doctor Vomact burned his brain out for him. And took his eyes out, too.”

  Mercer sat back on the ground and looked at the girl. “You told me to do it. Now tell me what for.”

  “To let you see. To let you know. To let you think.”

  “That’s all?” said Mercer.

  The girl twisted with startling suddenness. All the way down her series of bodies, her chests heaved. Mercer wondered how air got into all of them. He did not feel sorry for her; he did not feel sorry for anyone except himself. When the spasm passed the girl smiled at him apologetically.

  “They just gave me a new plant.”

  Mercer nodded grimly.

  “What now, a hand? It seems you have enough.”

  “Oh, those,” she said, looking back at her many torsos. “I promised B’dikkat that I’d let them grow. He’s good. But that man, stranger. Look at that man you dug up. Who’s better off, he or we?”

  Mercer stared at her. “Is that what you had me dig him up for?”

  “Yes,” said the girl.

  “Do you expect me to answer?”

  “No,” said the girl, “not now.”

  “Who are you?” said Mercer.

  “We never ask that here. It doesn’t matter. But since you’re new, I’ll tell you. I used to be the Lady Da—the Emperor’s stepmother.”

  “You!” he exclaimed.

  She smiled, ruefully. “You’re still so fresh you think it matters! But I have something more important to tell you.” She stopped and bit her lip.

  “What?” he urged. “Better tell me before I get another bite. I won’t be able to think or talk then, not for a long time. Tell me now.”

  She brought her face close to his. It was still a lovely face, even in the dying orange of this violet-sunned sunset. “People never live for ever.”

  “Yes,” said Mercer. “I knew that.”

  “Believe it,” ordered the Lady Da.

  Lights flashed across the dark plain, still in the distance. Said she, “Dig in, dig in for the night. They may miss you.”

  Mercer started digging. He glanced over at the man he had dug up. The brainless body, with motions as soft as those of a starfish under water, was pushing its way back into the earth.

  * * * *

  Five or seven days later, there was a shouting through the herd.

  Mercer had come to know a half-man, the lower part of whose body was gone and whose viscera were kept in place with what resembled a translucent plastic bandage. The half-man had shown him how to lie still when the dromozoa came with their inescapable errands of doing good.

  Said the half-man, “You can’t fight them. They made Alvarez as big as a mountain, so that he never stirs. Now they’re trying to make us happy. They feed us and clean us and sweeten us up. Lie still. Don’t worry about screaming. We all do.”

  “When do we get the drug?” said Mercer.

  “When B’dikkat comes.”

  B’dikkat came that day, pushing a sort of wheeled sled ahead of him. The runners carried it over the hillocks; the wheels worked on the surface.

  Even before he arrived, the herd sprang into furious action. Everywhere, people were digging up the sleepers. By the time B’dikkat reached their waiting place, the herd must have uncovered twice their own number of sleeping pink bodies—men and women, young and old. The sleepers looked no better and no worse than the waking ones.

  “Hurry!” said the Lady Da. “He never gives any of us a shot until we’re all ready.”

  B’dikkat wore his heavy lead suit.

  He lifted an arm in friendly greeting, like a father returning home with treats for his children. The herd clustered around him but did not crowd him.

  He reached into the sled. There was a harnessed bottle which he threw over his shoulders. He snapped the locks on the straps. From the bottle there hung a tube. Midway down the tube there was a small pressure-pump. At the end of the tube there was a glistening hypodermic needle.

  When ready, B’dikkat gestured for them to come closer. They approached him with radiant happiness. He stepped through their ranks and past them, to the girl who had the boy growing from her neck. His mechanical voice boomed through the loudspeaker set in the top of his suit.

  “Good girl. Good, good girl. You get a big, big present.” He thrust the hypodermic into her so long that Mercer could see an air bubble travel from the pump up to the bottle.

  Then he moved back to the others, booming a word now and then, moving with improbable grace and speed amid the people. His needle flashed as he gave them hypodermics under pressure. The people dropped to sitting position or lay down on the ground as though half asleep.

  * * * *

  He knew Mercer. “Hello, fellow. Now you can have the fun. It would have killed you in the cabin. Do you have anything for me?”

  Mercer stammered, not knowing what B’dikkat meant, and the two-nosed man answered for him, “I think he has a nice baby head, but it isn’t big enough for you to take y
et.”

  Mercer never noticed the needle touch his arm.

  B’dikkat had turned to the next knot of people when the super-condamine hit Mercer.

  He tried to run after B’dikkat, to hug the lead space suit, to tell B’dikkat that he loved him. He stumbled and fell, but it did not hurt. The many-bodied girl lay near him. Mercer spoke to her.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? You’re beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I’m so happy to be here.”

  The woman covered with growing hands came and sat beside them. She radiated warmth and good fellowship. Mercer thought that she looked very distinguished and charming. He struggled out of his clothes. It was foolish and snobbish to wear clothing when none of these nice people did.

  The two women babbled and crooned at him.

  With one corner of his mind he knew that they were saying nothing, just expressing the euphoria of a drug so powerful that the known universe had forbidden it. With most of his mind he was happy. He wondered how anyone could have the good luck to visit a planet as nice as this. He tried to tell the Lady Da, but the words weren’t quite straight.

  A painful stab hit him in the abdomen. The drug went after the pain and swallowed it. It was like the cap in the hospital, only a thousand times better. The pain was gone, though it had been crippling the first time.

  He forced himself to be deliberate. He rammed his mind into focus and said to the two ladies who lay pinkly nude beside him in the desert, “That was a good bite. Maybe I will grow another head. That would make B’dikkat happy!”

  The Lady Da forced the foremost of her bodies in an upright position. Said she, “I’m strong, too. I can talk. Remember, man, remember. People never live for ever. We can die too, we can die like real people. I do so believe in death!”

  Mercer smiled at her through his happiness.

  “Of course you can. But isn’t this nice…”

  With this he felt his lips thicken and his mind go slack. He was wide awake, but he did not feel like doing anything. In that beautiful place, among all those companionable and attractive people, he sat and smiled.

  B’dikkat was sterilizing his knives.

  * * * *

  Mercer wondered how long the super-condamine had lasted him. He endured the ministrations of the dromozoa without screams or movement. The agonies of nerves and itching of skin were phenomena which happened somewhere near him, but meant nothing. He watched his own body with remote, casual interest. The Lady Da and the hand-covered woman stayed near him. After a long time the half-man dragged himself over to the group with his powerful arms. Having arrived he blinked sleepily and friendlily at them, and lapsed back into the restful stupor from which he had emerged. Mercer saw the sun rise on occasion, closed his eyes briefly, and opened them to see stars shining. Time had no meaning. The dromozoa fed him in their mysterious way; the drug cancelled out his needs for cycles of the body.