Is That What People Do?

by Robert Sheckley

  He might be right, Maarten thought. Or perhaps Earthmen were just a fumbling race. For all their good intentions, population after population feared them, hated them, envied them, mainly on the basis of unfavorable first impressions.

  Still, there seemed to be a chance here. What else could go wrong?

  Forcing a smile, then quickly erasing it, Maarten limped into the village beside Moreri.

  Technologically, the Durellan civilization was of a low order. A limited use had been made of wheel and lever, but the concept of mechanical advantage had been carried no further. There was evidence of a rudimentary knowledge of plane geometry and a fair idea of astronomy.

  Artistically, however, the Durellans were adept and surprisingly sophisticated, particularly in wood carving. Even the simplest huts had bas-relief panels, beautifully conceived and executed.

  “Do you think I could take some photographs?” Croswell asked.

  “I see no reason why not,” Maarten said. He ran his fingers lovingly over a large panel, carved of the same straight-grained black wood that formed his cane. The finish was as smooth as skin beneath his fingertips.

  The chief gave his approval and Croswell took photographs and tracings of Durellan home, market and temple decorations.

  Maarten wandered around, gently touching the intricate bas-reliefs, speaking with some of the natives through Chedka, and generally sorting out his impressions.

  The Durellans, Maarten judged, were highly intelligent and had a potential comparable to that of Homo sapiens. Their lack of a defined technology was more the expression of a cooperation with nature rather than a flaw in their makeup. They seemed inherently peace-loving and nonaggressive—valuable neighbors for an Earth that, after centuries of confusion, was striving toward a similar goal.

  This was going to be the basis of his report to the Second Contact Team. With it, he hoped to be able to add, A favorable impression seems to have been left concerning Earth. No unusual difficulties are to be expected.

  Chedka had been talking earnestly with Chief Moreri. Now, looking slightly more wide awake than usual, he came over and conferred with Maarten in a hushed voice. Maarten nodded, keeping his face expressionless, and went over to Croswell, who was snapping his last photographs.

  “All ready for the big show?” Maarten asked.

  “What show?”

  “Moreri is throwing a feast for us tonight,” Maarten said. “Very big, very important feast. a final gesture of good will and all that.” Although his tone was casual, there was a gleam of deep satisfaction in his eyes.

  Croswell’s reaction was more immediate. “Then we’ve made it! The contact is successful!”

  Behind him, two natives shook at the loudness of his voice and tottered feebly away.

  “We’ve made it,” Maarten whispered, “if we watch our step. They’re a fine, understanding people—but we do seem to grate on them a bit.”

  By evening, Maarten and Croswell had completed a chemical examination of the Durellan foods and found nothing harmful to humans. They took several more pink tablets, changed coveralls and sandals, bathed again in the degermifier, and proceeded to the feast.

  The first course was an orange-green vegetable that tasted like squash. Then Chief Moreri gave a short talk on the importance of intercultural relations. They were served a dish resembling rabbit and Croswell was called upon to give a speech.

  “Remember,” Maarten whispered, “whisper!”

  Croswell stood up and began to speak. Keeping his voice down and his face blank, he began to enumerate the many similarities between Earth and Durell, depending mainly on gestures to convey his message.

  Chedka translated. Maarten nodded his approval. The chief nodded. The feasters nodded.

  Croswell made his last points and sat down. Maarten clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done, Ed. You’ve got a natural gift for—what’s wrong?”

  Croswell had a startled and incredulous look on his face. “Look!”

  Maarten turned. The chief and the feasters, their eyes open and staring, were still nodding.

  “Chedka!” Maarten whispered. “Speak to them!”

  The Eborian asked the chief a question. There was no response. The chief continued his rhythmic nodding.

  “Those gestures,” Maarten said. “You must have hypnotized them!” He scratched his head, then coughed once, loudly. The Durellans stopped nodding, blinked their eyes and began to talk rapidly and nervously among themselves.

  “They say you’ve got some strong powers,” Chedka translated at random. “They say that aliens are pretty queer people and doubt if they can be trusted.”

  “What does the chief say?” Maarten asked.

  “The chief believes you’re all right. He is telling them that you meant no harm.”

  “Good enough. Let’s stop while we’re ahead.”

  He stood up, followed by Croswell and Chedka.

  “We are leaving now,” he told the chief in a whisper, “but we beg permission for others of our kind to visit you. Forgive the mistakes we have made; they were due only to ignorance of your ways.”

  Chedka translated, and Maarten went on whispering, his face expressionless, his hands at his sides. He spoke of the oneness of the Galaxy, the joys of cooperation, peace, the exchange of goods and art, and the essential solidarity of all human life.

  Moreri, though still a little dazed from the hypnotic experience, answered that the Earthmen would always be welcome.

  Impulsively, Croswell held out his hand. The chief looked at it for a moment, puzzled, then took it, obviously wondering what to do with it and why.

  He gasped in agony and pulled his hand back. They could see deep burns blotched red against his skin.

  “What could have—”

  “Perspiration!” Maarten said. “It’s an acid. Must have an almost instantaneous effect upon their particular makeup. Let’s get out of here.”

  The natives were milling together and they had picked up some stones and pieces of wood. The chief, although still in pain, was arguing with them, but the Earthmen didn’t wait to hear the results of the discussion. They retreated to their ship, as fast as Maarten could hobble with the help of his cane.

  The forest was dark behind them and filled with suspicious movements. Out of breath, they arrived at the spaceship. Croswell, in the lead, sprawled over a tangle of grass and fell headfirst against the port with a resounding clang.

  “Damn!” he howled in pain.

  The ground rumbled beneath them, began to tremble and slide away.

  “Into the ship!” Maarten ordered.

  They managed to take off before the ground gave way completely.

  “It must have been sympathetic vibration again,” Croswell said, several hours later, when the ship was in space. “But of all the luck—to be perched on a rock fault!”

  Maarten sighed and shook his head. “I really don’t know what to do. I’d like to go back, explain to them but—”

  “We’ve outlived our welcome,” Croswell said.

  “Apparently. Blunders, nothing but blunders. We started out badly, and everything we did made it worse.”

  “It is not what you do,” Chedka explained in the most sympathetic voice they had ever heard him use. “It’s not your fault. It’s what you are.”

  Maarten considered that for a moment. “Yes, you’re right. Our voices shatter their land, our expressions disgust them, our gestures hypnotize them, our breath asphyxiates them, our perspiration burns them. Oh, Lord!”

  “Lord, Lord,” Croswell agreed glumly. “We’re living chemical factories—only turning out poison gas and corrosives exclusively.”

  “But that is not all you are,” Chedka said. “Look.”

  He held up Maarten’s walking stick. Along the upper part, where Maarten had handled it, long-dormant buds had burst into pink and white flowers, and their scent filled the cabin.

  “You see?” Chedka said. “You are this, also.”

  “That stic
k was dead,” Croswell mused. “Some oil in our skin, I imagine.”

  Maarten shuddered. “Do you suppose that all the carvings we touched—the huts—the temple—”

  “I should think so,” Croswell said.

  Maarten closed his eyes and visualized it, the sudden bursting into bloom of the dead, dried wood.

  “I think they’ll understand,” he said, trying very hard to believe himself. “It’s a pretty symbol and they’re quite an understanding people. I think they’ll approve of—well, at least some of the things we are.”

  THE STORE OF THE WORLDS

  Mr. Wayne came to the end of the long, shoulder-high mound of gray rubble, and there was the Store of the Worlds. It was exactly as his friends had described; a small shack constructed of bits of lumber, parts of cars, a piece of galvanized iron and a few rows of crumbling bricks, all daubed over with a watery blue paint.

  Mr. Wayne glanced back down the long lane of rubble to make sure he hadn’t been followed. He tucked his parcel more firmly under his arm; then, with a little shiver at his own audacity, he opened the door and slipped inside.

  “Good morning,” the proprietor said.

  He, too, was exactly as described; a tall, crafty-looking old fellow with narrow eyes and a downcast mouth. His name was Tompkins. He sat in an old rocking chair, and perched on the back of it was a blue and green parrot. There was one other chair in the store, and a table. On the table was a rusted hypodermic.

  “I’ve heard about your store from friends,” Mr. Wayne said.

  “Then you know my price,” Tompkins said. “Have you brought it?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wayne, holding up his parcel. “But I want to ask first—”

  “They always want to ask,” Tompkins said to the parrot, who blinked. “Go ahead, ask.”

  “I want to know what really happens.”

  Tompkins sighed. “What happens is this. You pay me my fee. I give you an injection which knocks you out. Then, with the aid of certain gadgets which I have in the back of the store, I liberate your mind.”

  Tompkins smiled as he said that, and his silent parrot seemed to smile, too.

  “What happens then?” Mr. Wayne asked. “Your mind, liberated from its body, is able to choose from the countless probability-worlds which the Earth casts off in every second of its existence.”

  Grinning now, Tompkins sat up in his rocking chair and began to show signs of enthusiasm.

  “Yes, my friend, though you might not have suspected it, from the moment this battered Earth was born out of the sun’s fiery womb, it cast off its alternate-probability worlds. Worlds without end, emanating from events large and small; every Alexander and every amoeba creating worlds, just as ripples will spread in a pond no matter how big or how small the stone you throw. Doesn’t every object cast a shadow? Well, my friend, the Earth itself is four-dimensional; therefore it casts three-dimensional shadows, solid reflections of itself through every moment of its being. Millions, billions of Earths! An infinity of Earths! And your mind, liberated by me, will be able to select any of these worlds, and to live upon it for a while.”

  Mr. Wayne was uncomfortably aware that Tompkins sounded like a circus barker, proclaiming marvels that simply couldn’t exist. But, Mr. Wayne reminded himself, things had happened within his own lifetime which he would never have believed possible. Never! So perhaps the wonders that Tompkins spoke of were possible, too.

  Mr. Wayne said, “My friends also told me—”

  “That I was an out-and-out fraud?” Tompkins asked. “Some of them implied that,” Mr. Wayne said cautiously. “But I try to keep an open mind. They also said—”

  “I know what your dirty-minded friends said. They told you about the fulfillment of desire. Is that what you want to hear about?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wayne. “They told me that whatever I wished for—whatever I wanted—”

  “Exactly,” Tompkins said. “The thing could work in no other way. There are the infinite worlds to choose among. Your mind chooses, and is guided only by desire. Your deepest desire is the only thing that counts. If you have been harboring a secret dream of murder—”

  “Oh hardly, hardly!” cried Mr. Wayne.

  “—then you will go to a world where you can murder, where you can roll in blood, where you can outdo Sade or Caesar, or whoever your idol may be. Suppose it’s power you want’ Then you’ll choose a world where you are a god, literally and actually. A bloodthirsty Juggernaut, perhaps, or an all-wise Buddha.”

  “I doubt very much if I—”

  “There are other desires, too,” Tompkins said. “All heavens and all hells. Unbridled sexuality. Gluttony, drunkenness, love, fame—anything you want.”

  “Amazing!” said Mr. Wayne.

  “Yes,” Tompkins agreed. “Of course, my little list doesn’t exhaust all the possibilities, all the combinations and permutations of desire. For all I know you might want a simple, placid, pastoral existence on a South Seas island among idealized natives.”

  “That sounds more like me,” Mr. Wayne said, with a shy laugh.

  “But who knows?” Tompkins asked. “Even you might not know what your true desires are. They might involve your own death.”

  “Does that happen often?” Mr. Wayne asked anxiously.

  “Occasionally.”

  “I wouldn’t want to die,” Mr. Wayne said.

  “It hardly ever happens,” Tompkins said, looking at the parcel in Mr. Wayne’s hands.

  “If you say so...But how do I know all this is real? Your fee is extremely high, it’ll take everything I own. And for all I know, you’ll give me a drug and I’ll just dream! Everything I own just for a—a shot of heroin and a lot of fancy words!”

  Tompkins smiled reassuringly. “The experience has no drug-like quality about it. And no sensation of a dream, either.”

  “If it’s true, “Mr. Wayne said, a little petulantly, “why can’t I stay in the world of my desire for good?”

  “I’m working on that,” Tompkins said. “That’s why I charge so high a fee; to get materials, to experiment. I’m trying to find a way of making the transition permanent. So far I haven’t been able to loosen the cord that binds a man to his own Earth—and pulls him back to it. Not even the great mystics could cut that cord, except with death. But I still have my hopes.”

  “It would be a great thing if you succeeded,” Mr. Wayne said politely.

  “Yes it would!” Tompkins cried, with a surprising burst of passion. “For then I’d turn my wretched shop into an escape hatch! My process would be free then, free for everyone! Everyone would go to the Earth of their desires, the Earth that really suited them, and leave this damned place to the rats and worms—”

  Tompkins cut himself off in mid-sentence, and became icy calm. “But I fear my prejudices are showing. I can’t offer a permanent escape from the Earth yet; not one that doesn’t involve death. Perhaps I never will be able to. For now, all I can offer you is a vacation, a change, a taste of another world and a look at your own desires. You know my fee. I’ll refund it if the experience isn’t satisfactory.”

  “That’s good of you,” Mr. Wayne said, quite earnestly. “But there’s that other matter my friends told me about. The ten years off my life.”

  “That can’t be helped,” Tompkins said, “and can’t be refunded. My process is a tremendous strain on the nervous system, and life-expectancy is shortened accordingly. That’s one of the reasons why our so-called government has declared my process illegal.”

  “But they don’t enforce the ban very firmly,” Mr. Wayne said.

  “No. Officially the process is banned as a harmful fraud. But officials are men, too. They’d like to leave this Earth, just like everyone else.”

  “The cost,” Mr. Wayne mused, gripping his parcel tightly. “And ten years off my life! For the fulfillment of my secret desires...Really, I must give this some thought.”

  “Think away,” Tompkins said indifferently.

  All th
e way home Mr. Wayne thought about it. When his train reached Port Washington, Long Island, he was still thinking. And driving his car from the station to his home he was still thinking about Tompkins’ crafty old face, and worlds of probability, and the fulfillment of desire.

  But when he stepped inside his house, those thoughts had to stop. Janet, his wife, wanted him to speak sharply to the maid, who had been drinking again. His son Tommy wanted help with the sloop, which was to be launched tomorrow. And his baby daughter wanted to tell about her day in kindergarten.

  Mr. Wayne spoke pleasantly but firmly to the maid. He helped Tommy put the final coat of copper paint on the sloop’s bottom, and he listened to Peggy tell about her adventures in the playground.

  Later, when the children were in bed and he and Janet were alone in their living room, she asked him if something were wrong.

  “Wrong?”

  “You seem to be worried about something,” Janet said. “Did you have a bad day at the office?”

  “Oh, just the usual sort of thing...”

  He certainly was not going to tell Janet, or anyone else, that he had taken the day off and gone to see Tompkins in his crazy old Store of the Worlds. Nor was he going to speak about the right every man should have, once in his lifetime, to fulfill his most secret desires. Janet, with her good common sense, would never understand that.

  The next days at the office were extremely hectic. All of Wall Street was in a mild panic over events in the Middle East and in Asia, and stocks were reacting accordingly. Mr. Wayne settled down to work. He tried not to think of the fulfillment of desire at the cost of everything he possessed, with ten years of his life thrown in for good measure. It was crazy! Old Tompkins must be insane!

  On weekends he went sailing with Tommy. The old sloop was behaving very well, taking practically no water through her bottom seams. Tommy wanted a new suit of racing sails, but Mr. Wayne sternly rejected that. Perhaps next year, if the market looked better. For now, the old sails would have to do.

  Sometimes at night, after the children were asleep, he and Janet would go sailing. Long Island Sound was quiet then, and cool. Their boat glided past the blinking buoys, sailing toward the swollen yellow moon,