MMMmmmmmm, a bee ran through his brain.
He sat up. He shook his head. He put his hands to his ears. He blinked at the crashed ship. Hard metal. He felt the solid rock under his fingers. He saw the real sun warming the blue sky.
Let’s try sleeping on our back, he thought. He adjusted himself, lying back down. His watch ticked on his wrist. The blood burned in his veins.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sang the voices.
Ohhhhhhhh, sang the voices.
Ahhhhhhhh, sang the voices.
Die, die, die, die, die. Sleep, sleep, die, sleep, die, sleep, diet Oohhh. Ahhhh. Eeeeeee!
Blood tapped in his ears. The sound of the wind rising.
Mine, mine, said a voice. Mine, mine, he’s mine!
No, mine, mine, said another voice. No, mine, mine; he’s mine!
No, ours, ours, sang ten voices. Ours, ours, he’s ours!
His fingers twitched. His jaws spasmed. His eyelids jerked.
At last, at last, sang a high voice. Now, now. The long time, the waiting. Over, over, sang the high voice. Over, over at last!
It was like being undersea. Green songs, green visions, green time. Bubbled voices drowning in deep liquors of sea tide. Far away choruses chanting senseless rhymes. Leonard Sale stirred in agony.
Mine, mine, cried a loud voice. Mine, mine! shrieked another. Ours, ours! shrieked the chorus.
The din of metal, the crash of sword, the conflict; the battle, the fight, the war. All of it exploding, his mind fiercely torn apart!
Eeeeeeee!
He leaped up, screaming. The landscape melted and flowed.
A voice said, “I am Tylle of Rathalar. Proud Tylle, Tylle of the Blood Mound and the Death Drum. Tylle of Rathalar, Killer of Men!”
Another spoke, “I am Iorr of Wendillo, Wise Iorr, Destroyer of Infidels!”
The chorus chanted, And we the warriors, we the steel, we the warriors, we the red blood rushing, the red blood falling, the red blood steaming in the sun—
Leonard Sale staggered under the burden. “Go away!” he cried. “Leave me, in God’s name, leave me!”
Eeeeeeeee, shrieked the high sound of steel hot on steel.
Silence.
He stood with the sweat boiling out of him. He was trembling so violently he could not stand. Insane, he thought. Absolutely insane. Raving insane. Insane.
He jerked the food kit open, did something to a chemical packet. Hot coffee was ready in an instant. He mouthed it, spilled gushes of it down his shirt. He shivered. He sucked in raw gulps of breath.
Let’s be logical, he thought, sitting down heavily. The coffee seared his tongue. No record of insanity in the family for two hundred years. All healthy, well balanced. No reason for insanity now. Shock? Silly. No shock. I’m to be rescued in six days. No shock to that. No danger. Just an ordinary planetoid. Ordinary, ordinary place. No reason for insanity. I’m sane.
Oh ? cried a small metal voice within. An echo. Fading.
“Yes!” he cried, beating his fists together. “Sane!”
Hahahahahahahahahaha. Somewhere a vanishing laughter.
He whirled about. “Shut up, you!” he cried.
We didn’t say anything, said the mountains. We didn’t say anything, said the sky. We didn’t say anything, said the wreckage.
“All right, then,” he said, swaying. “See that you don’t.”
Everything was normal.
The pebbles were getting hot. The sky was big and blue. He looked at his fingers and saw the way the sun burned on every black hair. He looked at his boots and the dust on them. Suddenly he felt very happy because he made a decision. I won’t go to sleep, he thought. I’m having nightmares, so why sleep? There’s your solution.
He made a routine. From nine o’clock in the morning, which was this minute, until twelve, he would walk around and see the planetoid. He would write on a pad with a yellow pencil everything he saw. Then he would sit down and open a can of oily sardines and some canned fresh bread with good butter on it. From twelve-thirty until four he would read nine chapters of War and Peace. He took the book from the wreckage and laid it where he might find it later. There was a book of T. S. Eliot’s poetry, too. That might be nice.
Supper would come at five-thirty, and then from six until ten he would listen to the radio from Earth. There would be a couple of bad comedians telling jokes, and a bad singer singing some song, and the latest news flashes, signing off at midnight with the U.N. anthem.
After that?
He felt sick.
I’ll play solitaire until dawn, he thought. I’ll sit up and drink hot black coffee and play solitaire, no cheating, until sunrise.
Ho, ho, he thought.
“What did you say?” he asked himself.
“I said ‘Ha, ha’,” he replied. “Some time you’ll have to sleep.”
“I’m wide awake,” he said.
“Liar,” he retorted, enjoying the conversation.
“I feel fine,” he said.
“Hypocrite,” he replied.
“I’m not afraid of the night, or sleep, or anything,” he said.
“Very funny,” he said.
He felt bad. He wanted to sleep. And the fact that he was afraid of sleep made him want to lie down all the more and shut his eyes and curl up. “Comfy-cozy?” asked his ironic censor.
“I’ll just walk and look at the rocks and the geological formations and think how good it is to be alive,” he said.
“Ye gods,” cried his censor. “William Saroyan!”
You’ll go on, he thought, maybe one day, maybe one night, but what about the next night, and the next, and the next? Can you stay awake all that time, for six nights? Until the rescue ship comes? Are you that good, that strong?
The answer was no.
What are you afraid of? I don’t know. Those voices. Those sounds. But they can’t hurt you, can they?
They might. You’ve got to face them some time. Must I? Brace up to it, old man. Chin up, and all that rot.
He sat down on the hard ground. He felt very much like crying. He felt as if life were over and he was entering new and unknown territory. It was such a deceiving day, with the sun warm; physically, he felt able and well; one might fish on such a day as this, or pick flowers, or kiss a woman, or anything. But in the midst of a lovely day, what did one get?
Death.
Well, hardly that.
Death, he insisted.
He lay down and closed his eyes. He was tired of messing around.
All right, he thought, if you are death, come get me. I want to know what all this damned nonsense is about.
Death came.
~ * ~
Eeeeeeeee, said a voice.
“Yes, I know,” said Leonard Sale, lying there. “But what else?”
Ahhhhhhhh, said a voice.
“I know that, also,” said Leonard Sale irritably. He turned cold. His mouth hung open wildly.
“I am Tylle of Rathalar, Killer of Men!”
“I am Iorr of Wendillo, Destroyer of Infidels!”
“What is this place?” asked Leonard Sale, struggling against horror.
“Once a mighty planet!” said Tylle of Rathalar.
“Once a place of battles!” said Iorr of Wendillo.
“Now dead,” said Tylle.
“Now silent,” said Iorr.
“Until you came,” said Tylle.
“To give us life again,” said Iorr.
“You’re dead,” insisted Leonard Sale, flesh writhing. “You’re nothing but empty wind.”
“We live, through you.”
“And fight, through you!”
So that’s it, thought Leonard Sale. I’m to be a battleground, am I? “Are you friends?”
“Enemies!” cried Iorr.
“Foul enemies!” cried Tylle.
Leonard smiled a rictal smile. He felt ghastly. “How long have you waited?” he demanded.
“How long is time?”
“Te
n thousand years?”
“Perhaps.”
“Ten million years?”
“Perhaps.”
“What are you? Thoughts, spirits, ghosts?” he asked.
“All of those, and more.”
“Intelligences?”
“Precisely.”
“How did you survive?”
Eeeeeeee, sang the chorus, far away.
Ahhhhhhhh, sang another army, waiting to fight.
“Once upon a time, this was fertile land, a rich planet. And there were two nations, strong nations, led by two strong men. I, Iorr. And he, that one who calls himself Tylle. And the planet declined and gave way to nothingness. The peoples and the armies languished in the midst of a great war which had lasted five thousand years. We lived long lives and loved long loves, drank much, slept much, fought much. And when the planet died, our bodies withered, and only in time, and with much science, did we survive.”
“Survive,” wondered Leonard Sale. “But there is nothing of you!”
“Our minds, fool, our minds! What is a body without a mind?”
“What is a mind without a body?” laughed Leonard Sale. “I’ve got you there. Admit it, I’ve got you!”
“True,” said the cruel voice. “One is useless lacking the other. But survival is survival even when unconscious. The minds of our nations, through science, through wonder, survived.”
“But without senses, lacking eyes, ears, lacking touch, smell, and the rest?”
“Lacking all those, yes. We were vapors merely. For a long time. Until today.”
“And now I am here,” thought Leonard Sale.
“You are here,” said the voice. “To give substance to our mentalities. To give us our needed body.”
“I’m only one,” thought Sale.
“Nevertheless, you are of use.”
“I’m an individual,” thought Sale. “I resent your intrusion.”
“He resents our intrusion! Did you hear him, Iorr? He resents!”
“As if he had a right to resent!”
“Be careful,” warned Sale. “I’ll blink my eyes and you’ll be gone, phantoms! I’ll wake up and rub you out!”
“But you’ll have to sleep again some time!” cried Iorr. “And when you do, we’ll be here, waiting, waiting, waiting. For you.”
“What do you want?”
“Solidity. Mass. Sensation again.”
“You can’t both have it.”
“We’ll fight that out between us.”
A hot clamp twisted his skull. It was as if a spike had been thrust and beaten down between the bivalvular halves of his brain.
Now it was terribly clear. Horribly, magnificently clear. He was their universe. The world of his thoughts, his brain, his skull, divided into two camps, that of Iorr, that of Tylle. They were using him!
Pennants flung up on a pink mind sky! Brass shields caught the sun. Gray animals shifted and came rushing in bristling tides of sword and plume and trumpet.
Eeeeeeeee! The rushing.
Ahhhhhhhh! The roaring.
Nowwwwwww! The whirling.
Mmmmmmmm—
Ten thousand men hurtled across the small hidden stage. Ten thousand men floated on the shellacked inner ball of his eye. Ten thousand javelins hissed between the small bone hulls of his head. Ten thousand jeweled guns exploded. Ten thousand voices chanted in his ears. Now his body was riven and extended, shaken and rolled, he was screaming, writing, the plates of his skull threatened to burst asunder. The gabbling, the shrilling, as, across bone plains of mind and continent of inner marrow, through gullies of vein, down hills of artery, over rivers of melancholy, came armies and armies, one army, two armies, swords flashed in the sun, bearing down upon one another, fifty thousand minds snatching, scrabbling, cutting at him, demanding, using. In a moment, the hard collision, one army on another, the rush, the blood, the sound, the fury, the death, the insanity!
Like cymbals, the armies struck!
He leaped up, raving. He ran across the desert. He ran and ran and did not stop running.
He sat down and cried. He sobbed until his lungs ached. He cried very hard and long. Tears ran down his cheeks and into his upraised, trembling fingers. “God, God, help me, oh, God, help me,” he said.
All was normal again.
~ * ~
It was four o’clock in the afternoon. The rocks were baked by the sun. He managed, after a time, to cook himself a few hot biscuits, which he ate with strawberry jam. He wiped his stained fingers on his shirt, blindly, trying not to think.
At least I know what I’m up against, he thought. Oh, Lord, what a world. What an innocent-looking world, and what a monster it really is. It’s good no one ever explored it before. Or did they ? He shook his aching head. Pity them, who ever crashed here before, if any ever did. Warm sun, hard rocks, not a sign of hostility. A lovely world.
Until you shut your eyes and relaxed your mind.
And the night and the voices and the insanity and the death padded in on soft feet.
“I’m all right now, though,” he said proudly. “Look at that.” He displayed his hand. By a supreme effort of will, it was no longer shaking. “I’ll show you who in hell’s ruler here,” he announced to the innocent sky. “I am.” He tapped his chest.
To think that thought could live that long! A million years, perhaps, all these thoughts of death and disorder and conquest, lingering in the innocent but poisonous air of the planet, waiting for a real man to give them a channel through which they might issue again in all their senseless virulence.
Now that he was feeling better, it was all silly. All I have to do, he thought, is stay awake six nights. They won’t bother me that way. When I’m awake, I’m dominant. I’m stronger than those crazy monarchs and their silly tribes of sword flingers and shield bearers and horn blowers. I’ll stay awake.
But can you? he wondered. Six whole nights? Awake?
There’s coffee and medicine and books and cards.
But I’m tired now, so tired, he thought. Can I hold out?
Well, if not . . . There’s always the gun.
Where will these silly monarchs be if you put a bullet through their stage? All the world’s a stage? No. You, Leonard Sale, are the small stage. And they the players. And what if you put a bullet through the wings, tearing down scenes, destroying curtains, ruining lines! Destroy the stage, the players, all, if they aren’t careful!
First of all he must radio through to Marsport again. If there was any way they could rush the rescue ship sooner, then maybe he could hang on. Anyway, he must warn them what sort of planet this was, this so innocent-seeming spot of nightmare and fever vision—
He tapped on the radio key for a minute. His mouth tightened. The radio was dead.
It had sent through the proper rescue message, received a reply, and then extinguished itself.
The proper touch of irony, he thought. There was only one thing to do. Draw a plan.
This he did. He got a yellow pencil and delineated his six-day plan of escape.
Tonight, he wrote, read six more chapters of War and Peace. At four in the morning have hot black coffee. At four-fifteen take cards from pack and play ten games of solitaire. This should take until six-thirty when—more coffee. At seven o’clock, listen to early morning programs from Earth, if the receiving equipment on the radio works at all. Does it?
He tried the radio receiver. It was dead.
Well, he wrote, from seven o’clock until eight, sing all the songs you remember, make your own entertainment. From eight until nine think about Helen King. Remember Helen. On second thought, think about Helen right now.
He marked that out with his pencil.
The rest of the days were set down in minute detail.
He checked the medical kit. There were several packets of tablets that would keep you awake. One tablet an hour every hour for six days. He felt quite confident.
“Here’s mud in your evil eye, Iorr, Tylle!”
&nbs
p; He swallowed one of the stay-awake tablets with a scalding mouthful of black coffee.
~ * ~
Possible Worlds of Science Fiction Page 10