The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

  That left seventeen. A stable number.

  “And we must find out,” cried another, “Why all places are different, although there is no distance.”

  That was the problem. One is here. Then one is there. Just like that, no movement, no reason. And yet, without moving, one is in another place.

  “The stars are cold,” one cried.

  “Why?”

  “We must go to the Answerer.”

  For they had heard the legends, knew the tales. “Once there was a race, a good deal like us, and they Knew—and they told Answerer. Then they departed to where there is no place, but much distance.”

  “How do we get there?” the newborn nineteenth cried, filled now with knowledge.

  “We go.” And eighteen of them vanished. One was left. Moodily he stared at the tremendous spread of an icy star, then he too vanished.

  * * * *

  “Those old legends are true,” Morran gasped. “There it is.”

  They had come out of sub-space at the place the legends told of, and before them was a star unlike any other star. Morran invented a classification for it, but it didn’t matter. There was no other like it.

  Swinging around the star was a planet, and this too was unlike any other planet. Morran invented reasons, but they didn’t matter. This planet was the only one.

  “Strap yourself in, sir,” Morran said. “I’ll land as gently as I can.”

  * * * *

  Lek came to Answerer, striding swiftly from star to star. He lifted Answerer in his hand and looked at him.

  “So you are Answerer,” he said.

  “Yes,” Answerer said.

  “Then tell me,” Lek said, settling himself comfortably in a gap between the stars, “Tell me what I am.”

  “A partiality,” Answerer said. “An indication.”

  “Come now,” Lek muttered, his pride hurt. “You can do better than that. Now then. The purpose of my kind is to gather purple, and to build a mound of it. Can you tell me the real meaning of this?”

  “Your question is without meaning,” Answerer said. He knew what purple actually was, and what the mound was for. But the explanation was concealed in a greater explanation. Without this, Lek’s question was inexplicable, and Lek had failed to ask the real question.

  Lek asked other questions, and Answerer was unable to answer them. Lek viewed things through his specialized eyes, extracted a part of the truth and refused to see more. How to tell a blind man the sensation of green?

  Answerer didn’t try. He wasn’t supposed to.

  Finally, Lek emitted a scornful laugh. One of his little stepping-stones flared at the sound, then faded back to its usual intensity.

  Lek departed, striding swiftly across the stars.

  * * * *

  Answerer knew. But he had to be asked the proper questions first. He pondered this limitation, gazing at the stars which were neither large nor small, but exactly the right size.

  The proper questions. The race which built Answerer should have taken that into account, Answerer thought. They should have made some allowance for semantic nonsense, allowed him to attempt an unravelling.

  Answerer contented himself with muttering the answers to himself.

  * * * *

  Eighteen creatures came to Answerer, neither walking nor flying, but simply appearing. Shivering in the cold glare of the stars, they gazed up at the massiveness of Answerer.

  “If there is no distance,” one asked, “Then how can things be in other places?”

  Answerer knew what distance was, and what places were. But he couldn’t answer the question. There was distance, but not as these creatures saw it. And there were places, but in a different fashion from that which the creatures expected.

  “Rephrase the question,” Answerer said hopefully.

  “Why are we short here,” one asked, “And long over there? Why are we fat over there, and thin here? Why are the stars cold?”

  Answerer knew all things. He knew why stars were cold, but he couldn’t explain it in terms of stars or coldness.

  “Why,” another asked, “Is there a rule of eighteen? Why, when eighteen gather, is another produced?”

  But of course the answer was part of another, greater question, which hadn’t been asked.

  Another was produced by the rule of eighteen, and the nineteen creatures vanished.

  * * * *

  Answerer mumbled the right questions to himself, and answered them.

  * * * *

  “We made it,” Morran said. “Well, well.” He patted Lingman on the shoulder—lightly, because Lingman might fall apart.

  The old biologist was tired. His face was sunken, yellow, lined. Already the mark of the skull was showing in his prominent yellow teeth, his small, flat nose, his exposed cheekbones. The matrix was showing through.

  “Let’s get on,” Lingman said. He didn’t want to waste any time. He didn’t have any time to waste.

  Helmeted, they walked along the little path.

  “Not so fast,” Lingman murmured.

  “Right,” Morran said. They walked together, along the dark path of the planet that was different from all other planets, soaring alone around a sun different from all other suns.

  “Up here,” Morran said. The legends were explicit. A path, leading to stone steps. Stone steps to a courtyard. And then—the Answerer!

  To them, Answerer looked like a white screen set in a wall. To their eyes, Answerer was very simple.

  Lingman clasped his shaking hands together. This was the culmination of a lifetime’s work, financing, arguing, ferreting bits of legend, ending here, now.

  “Remember,” he said to Morran, “We will be shocked. The truth will be like nothing we have imagined.”

  “I’m ready,” Morran said, his eyes rapturous.

  “Very well. Answerer,” Lingman said, in his thin little voice, “What is life?”

  A voice spoke in their heads. “The question has no meaning. By ‘life,’ the Questioner is referring to a partial phenomenon, inexplicable except in terms of its whole.”

  “Of what is life a part?” Lingman asked.

  “This question, in its present form, admits of no answer. Questioner is still considering ‘life,’ from his personal, limited bias.”

  “Answer it in your own terms, then,” Morran said.

  “The Answerer can only answer questions.” Answerer thought again of the sad limitation imposed by his builders.

  Silence.

  “Is the universe expanding?” Morran asked confidently.

  “‘Expansion’ is a term inapplicable to the situation. Universe, as the Questioner views it, is an illusory concept.”

  “Can you tell us anything?” Morran asked.

  “I can answer any valid question concerning the nature of things.”

  * * * *

  The two men looked at each other.

  “I think I know what he means,” Lingman said sadly. “Our basic assumptions are wrong. All of them.”

  “They can’t be,” Morran said. “Physics, biology—”

  “Partial truths,” Lingman said, with a great weariness in his voice. “At least we’ve determined that much. We’ve found out that our inferences concerning observed phenomena are wrong.”

  “But the rule of the simplest hypothesis—”

  “It’s only a theory,” Lingman said.

  “But life—he certainly could answer what life is?”

  “Look at it this way,” Lingman said. “Suppose you were to ask, ‘Why was I born under the constellation Scorpio, in conjunction with Saturn?’ I would be unable to answer your question in terms of the zodiac, because the zodiac has nothing to do with it.”

  “I see,” Morran said slowly. “He can’t answer questions in terms of our assumptions.”

  “That seems to be the case. And he can’t alter our assumptions. He is limited to valid questions—which imply, it would seem, a knowledge we just don’t have.”

  “We c
an’t even ask a valid question?” Morran asked. “I don’t believe that. We must know some basics.” He turned to Answerer. “What is death?”

  “I cannot explain an anthropomorphism.”

  “Death an anthropomorphism!” Morran said, and Lingman turned quickly. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

  “Are anthropomorphisms unreal?” he asked.

  “Anthropomorphisms may be classified, tentatively, as, A, false truths, or B, partial truths in terms of a partial situation.”

  “Which is applicable here?”

  “Both.”

  That was the closest they got. Morran was unable to draw any more from Answerer. For hours the two men tried, but truth was slipping farther and farther away.

  “It’s maddening,” Morran said, after a while. “This thing has the answer to the whole universe, and he can’t tell us unless we ask the right question. But how are we supposed to know the right question?”

  Lingman sat down on the ground, leaning against a stone wall. He closed his eyes.

  “Savages, that’s what we are,” Morran said, pacing up and down in front of Answerer. “Imagine a bushman walking up to a physicist and asking him why he can’t shoot his arrow into the sun. The scientist can explain it only in his own terms. What would happen?”

  “The scientist wouldn’t even attempt it,” Lingman said, in a dim voice; “he would know the limitations of the questioner.”

  “It’s fine,” Morran said angrily. “How do you explain the earth’s rotation to a bushman? Or better, how do you explain relativity to him—maintaining scientific rigor in your explanation at all times, of course.”

  Lingman, eyes closed, didn’t answer.

  “We’re bushmen. But the gap is much greater here. Worm and super-man, perhaps. The worm desires to know the nature of dirt, and why there’s so much of it. Oh, well.”

  “Shall we go, sir?” Morran asked. Lingman’s eyes remained closed. His taloned fingers were clenched, his cheeks sunk further in. The skull was emerging.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  And Answerer knew that that was not the answer.

  * * * *

  Alone on his planet, which is neither large nor small, but exactly the right size, Answerer waits. He cannot help the people who come to him, for even Answerer has restrictions.

  He can answer only valid questions.

  Universe? Life? Death? Purple? Eighteen?

  Partial truths, half-truths, little bits of the great question.

  But Answerer, alone, mumbles the questions to himself, the true questions, which no one can understand.

  How could they understand the true answers?

  The questions will never be asked, and Answerer remembers something his builders knew and forgot.

  In order to ask a question you must already know most of the answer.

  COST OF LIVING

  Carrin decided that he could trace his present mood to Miller’s suicide last week. But the knowledge didn’t help him get rid of the vague, formless fear in the back of his mind. It was foolish. Miller’s suicide didn’t concern him.

  But why had that fat, jovial man killed himself? Miller had had everything to live for—wife, kids, good job, and all the marvelous luxuries of the age. Why had he done it?

  “Good morning, dear,” Carrin’s wife said as he sat down at the breakfast table.

  “Morning, honey. Morning, Billy.”

  His son grunted something.

  You just couldn’t tell about people, Carrin decided, and dialed his breakfast. The meal was gracefully prepared and served by the new Avignon Electric Auto-cook.

  His mood persisted, annoyingly enough since Carrin wanted to be in top form this morning. It was his day off, and the Avignon Electric finance man was coming. This was an important day.

  He walked to the door with his son.

  “Have a good day, Billy.”

  His son nodded, shifted his books and started to school without answering. Carrin wondered if something was bothering him, too. He hoped not. One worrier in the family was plenty.

  “See you later, honey.” He kissed his wife as she left to go shopping.

  At any rate, he thought, watching her go down the walk, at least she’s happy. He wondered how much she’d spend at the A. E. store.

  Checking his watch, he found that he had half an hour before the A. E. finance man was due. The best way to get rid of a bad mood was to drown it, he told himself, and headed for the shower.

  * * * *

  The shower room was a glittering plastic wonder, and the sheer luxury of it eased Carrin’s mind. He threw his clothes into the A. E. automatic Kleen-presser, and adjusted the shower spray to a notch above “brisk.” The five-degrees-above-skin-temperature water beat against his thin white body. Delightful! And then a relaxing rub-dry in the A. E. Auto-towel.

  Wonderful, he thought, as the towel stretched and kneaded his stringy muscles. And it should be wonderful, he reminded himself. The A. E. Auto-towel with shaving attachments had cost three hundred and thirteen dollars, plus tax.

  But worth every penny of it, he decided, as the A. E. shaver came out of a corner and whisked off his rudimentary stubble. After all, what good was life if you couldn’t enjoy the luxuries?

  His skin tingled when he switched off the Auto-towel. He should have been feeling wonderful, but he wasn’t. Miller’s suicide kept nagging at his mind, destroying the peace of his day off.

  Was there anything else bothering him? Certainly there was nothing wrong with the house. His papers were in order for the finance man.

  “Have I forgotten something?” he asked out loud.

  “The Avignon Electric finance man will be here in fifteen minutes,” his A. E. bathroom Wall-reminder whispered.

  “I know that. Is there anything else?”

  The Wall-reminder reeled off its memorized data—a vast amount of minutiae about watering the lawn, having the Jet-lash checked, buying lamb chops for Monday, and the like. Things he still hadn’t found time for.

  “All right, that’s enough.” He allowed the A. E. Auto-dresser to dress him, skillfully draping a new selection of fabrics over his bony frame. A whiff of fashionable masculine perfume finished him and he went into the living room, threading his way between the appliances that lined the walls.

  A quick inspection of the dials on the wall assured him that the house was in order. The breakfast dishes had been sanitized and stacked, the house had been cleaned, dusted, polished, his wife’s garments had been hung up, his son’s model rocket ships had been put back in the closet.

  Stop worrying, you hypochondriac, he told himself angrily.

  The door announced, “Mr. Pathis from Avignon Finance is here.”

  Carrin started to tell the door to open, when he noticed the Automatic Bartender.

  Good God, why hadn’t he thought of it!

  The Automatic Bartender was manufactured by Castile Motors. He had bought it in a weak moment. A. E. wouldn’t think very highly of that, since they sold their own brand.

  * * * *

  He wheeled the bartender into the kitchen, and told the door to open.

  “A very good day to you, sir,” Mr. Pathis said.

  Pathis was a tall, imposing man, dressed in a conservative tweed drape. His eyes had the crinkled corners of a man who laughs frequently. He beamed broadly and shook Carrin’s hand, looking around the crowded living room.

  “A beautiful place you have here, sir. Beautiful! As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ll be overstepping the company’s code to inform you that yours is the nicest interior in this section.”

  Carrin felt a sudden glow of pride at that, thinking of the rows of identical houses, on this block and the next, and the one after that.

  “Now, then, is everything functioning properly?” Mr. Pathis asked, setting his briefcase on a chair. “Everything in order?”

  “Oh, yes,” Carrin said enthusiastically. “Avignon Electric never goes out of whack.”

  “T
he phone all right? Changes records for the full seventeen hours?”

  “It certainly does,” Carrin said. He hadn’t had a chance to try out the phone, but it was a beautiful piece of furniture.

  “The Solido-projector all right? Enjoying the programs?”

  “Absolutely perfect reception.” He had watched a program just last month, and it had been startlingly lifelike.

  “How about the kitchen? Auto-cook in order? Recipe-master still knocking ’em out?”

  “Marvelous stuff. Simply marvelous.”

  Mr. Pathis went on to inquire about his refrigerator, his vacuum cleaner, his car, his helicopter, his subterranean swimming pool, and the hundreds of other items Carrin had bought from Avignon Electric.

  “Everything is swell,” Carrin said, a trifle untruthfully since he hadn’t unpacked every item yet. “Just wonderful.”

  “I’m so glad,” Mr. Pathis said, leaning back with a sigh of relief. “You have no idea how hard we try to satisfy our customers. If a product isn’t right, back it comes, no questions asked. We believe in pleasing our customers.”

  “I certainly appreciate it, Mr. Pathis.”

  * * * *

  Carrin hoped the A. E. man wouldn’t ask to see the kitchen. He visualized the Castile Motors Bartender in there, like a porcupine in a dog show.

  “I’m proud to say that most of the people in this neighborhood buy from us,” Mr. Pathis was saying. “We’re a solid firm.”

  “Was Mr. Miller a customer of yours?” Carrin asked.

  “That fellow who killed himself?” Pathis frowned briefly. “He was, as a matter of fact. That amazed me, sir, absolutely amazed me. Why, just last month the fellow bought a brand-new Jet-lash from me, capable of doing three hundred and fifty miles an hour on a straightaway. He was as happy as a kid over it, and then to go and do a thing like that! Of course, the Jet-lash brought up his debt a little.”

  “Of course.”

  “But what did that matter? He had every luxury in the world. And then he went and hung himself.”

  “Hung himself?”

  “Yes,” Pathis said, the frown coming back. “Every modern convenience in his house, and he hung himself with a piece of rope. Probably unbalanced for a long time.”