The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

  “But the expedition—your duty—”

  “I changed my mind,” Ger told him. “You know, Pilot, I never wanted to be a Detector.”

  “But you were born a Detector!”

  “That’s true,” Ger said. “But it doesn’t help. I always wanted to be a Hunter.”

  Pid shook his entire body in annoyance. “You can’t,” he said, very slowly, as one would explain to a Gromling. “The Hunter shape is forbidden to you.”

  “Not here it isn’t,” Ger said, still wagging his tail.

  “Let’s have no more of this,” Pid said angrily. “Get into that installation and set up your Displacer. I’ll try to overlook this heresy.”

  “No,” Ger said. “I don’t want the Grom here. They’d ruin it for the rest of us.”

  “He’s right,” a nearby oak tree said.

  “Ilg!” Pid gasped. “Where are you?”

  * * * *

  Branches stirred. “I’m right here,” Ilg said. “I’ve been Thinking.”

  “But—your caste—”

  “Pilot,” Ger said sadly, “why don’t you wake up? Most of the people on Grom are miserable. Only custom makes us take the caste-shape of our ancestors.”

  “Pilot,” Ilg said, “all Grom are born Shapeless!”

  “And being born Shapeless, all Grom should have Freedom of Shape,” Ger said.

  “Exactly,” Ilg said. “But he’ll never understand. Now excuse me. I want to Think.” And the oak tree was silent.

  Pid laughed humorlessly. “The Men will kill you off,” he said. “Just as they killed off all the other expeditions.”

  “No one from Grom has been killed,” Ger told him. “The other expeditions are right here.”

  “Alive?”

  “Certainly. The Men don’t even know we exist. That Dog I was Hunting with is a Grom from the twelfth expedition. There are hundreds of us here, Pilot. We like it.”

  Pid tried to absorb it all. He had always known that the lower castes were lax in caste-consciousness. But this was preposterous!

  This planet’s secret menace was—freedom!

  “Join us, Pilot,” Ger said. “We’ve got a paradise here. Do you know how many species there are on this planet? An uncountable number! There’s a shape to suit every need!”

  Pid ignored them. Traitors!

  He’d do the job all by himself.

  So Men were unaware of the presence of the Grom. Getting near the reactor might not be so difficult after all. The others had failed in their duty because they were of the lower castes, weak and irresponsible. Even the Pilots among them must have been secretly sympathetic to the Cult of Shapelessness the Chief had mentioned, or the alien planet could never have swayed them.

  What shape to assume for his attempt?

  Pid considered.

  A Dog might be best. Evidently Dogs could wander pretty much where they wished. If something went wrong, Pid could change his shape to meet the occasion.

  “The Supreme Council will take care of all of you,” he snarled, and shaped himself into a small brown Dog. “I’m going to set up the Displacer myself.”

  He studied himself for a moment, bared his teeth at Ger, and loped toward the gate.

  * * * *

  He loped for about ten feet and stopped in utter horror.

  The smells rushed at him from all directions. Smells in a profusion and variety he had never dreamed existed. Smells that were harsh, sweet, sharp, heavy, mysterious, overpowering. Smells that terrified. Alien and repulsive and inescapable, the odors of Earth struck him like a blow.

  He curled his lips and held his breath. He ran on for a few steps, and had to breathe again. He almost choked.

  He tried to remold his Dog-nostrils to be less sensitive. It didn’t work. It wouldn’t, so long as he kept the Dog-shape. An attempt to modify his metabolism didn’t work either.

  All this in the space of two or three seconds. He was rooted in his tracks, fighting the smells, wondering what to do.

  Then the noises hit him.

  They were a constant and staggering roar, through which every tiniest whisper of sound stood out clearly and distinct. Sounds upon sounds—more noise than he had ever heard before at one time in his life. The woods behind him had suddenly become a mad-house.

  Utterly confused, he lost control and became Shapeless.

  He half-ran, half-flowed into a nearby bush. There he re-Shaped, obliterating the offending Dog ears and nostrils with vicious strokes of his thoughts.

  The Dog-shape was out. Absolutely. Such appalling sharpness of senses might be fine for a Hunter such as Ger—he probably gloried in them. But another moment of such impressions would have driven Pid the Pilot mad.

  What now? He lay in the bush and thought about it, while gradually his mind threw off the last effects of the dizzying sensory assault.

  He looked at the gate. The Men standing there evidently hadn’t noticed his fiasco. They were looking in another direction.

  …a Man?

  Well, it was worth a try.

  * * * *

  Studying the Men at the gate, Pid carefully shaped himself into a facsimile—a synthesis, actually, embodying one characteristic of that, another of this.

  He emerged from the side of the bush opposite the gate, on his hands and knees. He sniffed the air, noting that the smells the Man-nostrils picked up weren’t unpleasant at all. In fact, some of them were decidedly otherwise. It had just been the acuity of the Dog-nostrils, the number of smells they had detected and the near-brilliance with which they had done so, that had shocked him.

  Also, the sounds weren’t half so devastating. Only relatively close sounds stood out. All else was an undetailed whispering.

  Evidently, Pid thought, it had been a long time since Men had been Hunters.

  He tested his legs, standing up and taking a few clumsy steps. Thud of foot on ground. Drag the other leg forward in a heavy arc. Thud. Rocking from side to side, he marched back and forth behind the bush. His arms flapped as he sought balance. His head wobbled on its neck, until he remembered to hold it up. Head up, eyes down, he missed seeing a small rock. His heel turned on it. He sat down, hard.

  The ankle hurt. Pid curled his Man-lips and crawled back into the bush.

  The Man-shape was too unspeakably clumsy. It was offensive to plod one step at a time. Body held rigidly upright. Arms wobbling. There had been a deluge of sense-impressions in the Dog-shape; there was dull, stiff, half-alive inadequacy to the Man-shape.

  Besides, it was dangerous, now that Pid thought it over, as well as distasteful. He couldn’t control it properly. It wouldn’t look right. Someone might question him. There was too much about Men he didn’t—couldn’t—know. The planting of the Displacer was too important a thing for him to fumble again. Only luck had kept him from being seen during the sensory onslaught.

  The Displacer in his body pouch pulsed and tugged, urging him to be on his way toward the distant reactor room.

  Grimly, Pid let out the last breath he had taken with his Man-lungs, and dissolved the lungs.

  What shape to take?

  Again he studied the gate, the Men standing beside it, the building beyond in which was the all-important reactor.

  A small shape was needed. A fast one. An unobtrusive one.

  He lay and thought.

  The bush rustled above him. A small brown shape had fluttered down to light on a twig. It hopped to another twig, twittering. Then it fluttered off in a flash, and was gone.

  That, Pid thought, was it.

  * * * *

  A Sparrow that was not a Sparrow rose from the bush a few moments later. An observer would have seen it circle the bush, diving, hedgehopping, even looping, as if practicing all maneuvers possible to Sparrows.

  Pid tensed his shoulder muscles, inclined his wings. He slipped off to the right, approached the bush at what seemed breakneck speed, though he knew this was only because of his small size. At the last second he lifted his tail. Not quite quic
kly enough. He swooped up and over the top of the bush, but his legs brushed the top leaves, his beak went down, and he stumbled in air for a few feet back-forward.

  He blinked beady eyes as if at a challenge. Back toward the bush at a fine clip, again up and over. This time cleanly.

  He chose a tree. Zoomed into its network of branches, wove a web of flight, working his way around and around the trunk, over and under branches that flashed before him, through crotches with no more than a feather’s-breath to spare.

  At last he rested on a low branch, and found himself chirping in delight.

  The tree extruded a feeler from the branch he sat on, and touched his wings and tail.

  “Interesting,” said the tree. “I’ll have to try that shape some time.”

  Ilg.

  “Traitor,” hissed Pid, growing a mouth in his chest to hiss it, and then he did something that caused Ilg to exclaim in outrage.

  Pid flew out of the woods. Over the underbrush and across the open space toward the gate.

  This body would do the trick!

  This body would do anything!

  He rose, in a matter of a few Sparrow heartbeats, to an altitude of a hundred feet. From here the gate, the Men, the building were small, sharp shapes against a green-brown mat. Pid found that he could see not only with unaccustomed clarity, but with a range of vision that astonished him. To right and to left he could see far into the hazy blue of the sky, and the higher he rose the farther he could see.

  He rose higher.

  The Displacer pulsed, reminding him of the job he had to do.

  * * * *

  He stiffened his wings and glided, regretfully putting aside his desires to experiment with this wonderful shape, at least for the present. After he planted the Displacer, he would go off by himself for a while and do it just a little more—somewhere where Ilg and Ger would not see him—before the Grom Army arrived and the invasion began.

  He felt a tiny twinge of guilt, as he circled. It was Evil to want to keep this alien flying shape any longer than was absolutely necessary to the performance of his duty. It was a device of the Shapeless One—

  But what had Ilg said? All Grom are born Shapeless. It was true. Grom children were amorphous, until old enough to be instructed in the caste-shape of their ancestors.

  Maybe it wasn’t too great a sin to alter your Shape, then—just once in a long while. After all, one must be fully aware of the nature of Evil in order to meaningfully reject it.

  He had fallen lower in circling. The Displacer pulse had strengthened. For some reason it irritated him. He drove higher on strong wings, circled again. Air rushed past him—a smooth, whispering flow, pierced by his beak, streaming invisibly past his sharp eyes, moving along his body in tiny turbulences that moved his feathers against his skin.

  It occurred to him—or rather struck him with considerable force—that he was satisfying a longing of his Pilot Caste that went far deeper than Piloting.

  He drove powerfully with his wings, felt tonus across his back, shot forward and up. He thought of the controls of his ship. He imagined flowing into them, becoming part of them, as he had so often done—and for the first time in his life the thought failed to excite him.

  No machine could compare with this!

  What he would give to have wings of his own!

  …Get from my sight, Shapeless One!

  The Displacer must be planted, activated. All Grom depended on him.

  He eyed the building, far below. He would pass over it. The Displacer would tell him which window to enter—which window was so near the reactor that he could do his job before the Men even knew he was about.

  He started to drop lower, and the Hawk struck.

  * * * *

  It had been above him. His first inkling of danger was the sharp pain of talons in his back, and the stunning blow of a beak across his head.

  Dazed, he let his back go Shapeless. His body-substance flowed from the grasp of the talons. He dropped a dozen feet and resumed Sparrow-shape, hearing an astonished squawk from the attacker.

  He banked, and looked up. The Hawk was eyeing him.

  Talons spread again. The sharp beak gaped. The Hawk swooped.

  Pid had to fight as a Bird, naturally. He was four hundred feet above the ground.

  So he became an impossibly deadly Bird.

  He grew to twice the size of the Hawk. He grew a foot-long beak with a double razor’s edge. He grew talons like six inch scimitars. His eyes gleamed a red challenge.

  The Hawk broke flight, squalling in alarm. Frantically, tail down and widespread, it thundered its wings and came to a dead stop six feet from Pid.

  Looking thoughtfully at Pid, it allowed itself to plummet. It fell a hundred feet, spread its wings, stretched its neck and flew off so hastily that its wings became blurs.

  Pid saw no reason to pursue it.

  Then, after a moment, he did.

  He glided, keeping the Hawk in sight, thoughts racing, feeling the newness, the power, the wonder of Freedom of Shape.

  Freedom.…

  He did not want to give it up.

  The bird-shape was wondrous. He would experiment with it. Later, he might tire of it for a time and assume another—a crawling or running shape, or even a swimming one. The possibilities for excitement, for adventure, for fulfilment and simple sensual pleasure were endless!

  Freedom of Shape was—obviously, now that you thought on it—the Grom birthright. And the caste-system was artificial—obviously. A device for political and priestly benefit—obviously.

  Go away, Shapeless One…this does not concern you.

  He rose to a thousand feet, two thousand, three. The Displacer’s pulse grew feebler and finally vanished.

  At four thousand feet he released it and watched it spin downward, vanish into a cloud.

  Then he set out after the Hawk, which was now only a dot on the horizon. He would find out how the Hawk had broken flight as it had—skidded on air—he wanted to do that too! There were so many things he wanted to learn about flying. In a week, he thought, he should be able to duplicate all the skill that millennia had evolved into Birds. Then his new life would really begin.

  He became a torpedo-shape with huge wings, and sped after the Hawk.

  WARM

  Anders lay on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes and black bow tie, contemplating, with a certain uneasiness, the evening before him. In twenty minutes he would pick up Judy at her apartment, and that was the uneasy part of it.

  He had realized, only seconds ago, that he was in love with her.

  Well, he’d tell her. The evening would be memorable. He would propose, there would be kisses, and the seal of acceptance would, figuratively speaking, be stamped across his forehead.

  Not too pleasant an outlook, he decided. It really would be much more comfortable not to be in love. What had done it? A look, a touch, a thought? It didn’t take much, he knew, and stretched his arms for a thorough yawn.

  “Help me!” a voice said.

  His muscles spasmed, cutting off the yawn in mid-moment. He sat upright on the bed, then grinned and lay back again.

  “You must help me!” the voice insisted.

  Anders sat up, reached for a polished shoe and fitted it on, giving his full attention to the tying of the laces.

  “Can you hear me?” the voice asked. “You can, can’t you?”

  That did it. “Yes, I can hear you,” Anders said, still in a high good humor. “Don’t tell me you’re my guilty subconscious, attacking me for a childhood trauma I never bothered to resolve. I suppose you want me to join a monastery.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the voice said. “I’m no one’s subconscious. I’m me. Will you help me?”

  Anders believed in voices as much as anyone; that is, he didn’t believe in them at all, until he heard them. Swiftly he catalogued the possibilities. Schizophrenia was the best answer, of course, and one in which his colleagues would concu
r. But Anders had a lamentable confidence in his own sanity. In which case—

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” the voice answered.

  Anders realized that the voice was speaking within his own mind. Very suspicious.

  “You don’t know who you are,” Anders stated. “Very well. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” The voice paused, and went on. “Look, I know how ridiculous this must sound. Believe me, I’m in some sort of limbo. I don’t know how I got here or who I am, but I want desperately to get out. Will you help me?”

  * * * *

  Still fighting the idea of a voice speaking within his head, Anders knew that his next decision was vital. He had to accept—or reject—his own sanity.

  He accepted it.

  “All right,” Anders said, lacing the other shoe. “I’ll grant that you’re a person in trouble, and that you’re in some sort of telepathic contact with me. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the voice said, with infinite sadness. “You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  “Can you contact anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Then how can you talk with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Anders walked to his bureau mirror and adjusted his black bow tie, whistling softly under his breath. Having just discovered that he was in love, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like a voice in his mind disturb him.

  “I really don’t see how I can be of any help,” Anders said, brushing a bit of lint from his jacket. “You don’t know where you are, and there don’t seem to be any distinguishing landmarks. How am I to find you?” He turned and looked around the room to see if he had forgotten anything.

  “I’ll know when you’re close,” the voice said. “You were warm just then.”

  “Just then?” All he had done was look around the room. He did so again, turning his head slowly. Then it happened.

  The room, from one angle, looked different. It was suddenly a mixture of muddled colors, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades he had selected. The lines of wall, floor and ceiling were strangely off proportion, zigzag, unrelated.

  Then everything went back to normal.