Is That What People Do?

by Robert Sheckley

  “What’s wrong?” Croswell asked.

  “I seem to have wrenched my ankle,” Maarten said miserably.

  Chief Moreri came up, followed by twenty or so villagers, made a short speech and presented Maarten with a walking stick of carved and polished black wood.

  “Thanks,” Maarten muttered, standing up and leaning gingerly on the cane. “What did he say?” he asked Chedka.

  “The chief said that the bridge was only a hundred years old and in good repair,” Chedka translated. “He apologizes that his ancestors didn’t build it better.”

  “Hmm,” Maarten said.

  “And the chief says that you are probably an unlucky man.”

  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 stick 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.”

  CAN YOU FEEL ANYTHING WHEN I DO THIS?

  It was a middle-class apartment in Forest Hills with all the standard stuff: slash-pine couch by Lady Yogina, strobe reading light over a big Uneasy Chair designed by Sri Somethingorother, bounce-sound projector playing Bloodstream Patterns by Drs. Molidoff and Yuli. There was also the usual microbiotic-food console, set now at Fat Black Andy’s Soul-Food Composition Number Three—hog’s jowls and black-eyed peas. And there was a Murphy Bed of Nails, the Beautyrest Expert Ascetic model with 2000 chrome-plated self-sharpening number-four nails. In a sentence, the whole place was furnished in a pathetic attempt at last year’s moderne-spirituel fashion.

  Inside this apartment, all alone and aching of anomie, was a semi-young housewife, Melisande Durr, who had just stepped out of the voluptuarium, the largest room in the home, with its king-size commode and its sadly ironic bronze lingam and yoni on the wall.

  She was a pretty girl, with really good legs, sweet hips, pretty stand-up breasts, long soft shiny hair, delicate little face. Nice, very nice. A girl that any man would like to lock onto. Once. Maybe even twice. But definitely not as a regular thing.

  Why not? Well, to give a recent example:

  “Hey, Sandy, honey, was anything wrong?”

  “No, Frank, it was marvelous; what made you think anything was wrong?”

  “Well, I guess it was the way you were staring up with a funny look on your face, almost frowning...”

  “Was I really? Oh, yes, I remember; I was trying to decide whether to buy one of those cute trompe-l’oeil things that they just got in at Saks, to put on the ceiling.”

  “You were thinking about that? Then?”

  “Oh, Frank, you mustn’t worry, it was great, Frank, you were great, I loved it, and I really mean that.”

  Frank was Melisande’s husband. He plays no part in this story and very little part in her life.

  So there she was, standing in her okay apartment, all beautiful outside and unborn inside, a lovely potential who had never been potentiated, a genuine U.S. untouchable...when the doorbell rang.

  Melisande looked startled, then uncertain. She waited. The doorbell rang again. She thought: Someone must have the wrong apartment.

  Nevertheless, she walked over, set the Door-Gard Entrance Obliterator to demolish any rapist or burglar or wise guy who might try to push his way in, then opened the door a crack and asked, “Who is there, please?”

  A man’s voice replied, “Acme Delivery Service, got a mumble here for Missus Mumble-mumble.”

  “I can’t understand, you’ll have to speak up.”

  “Acme Delivery, got a mumble for mumble-mumble and I can’t stand here all mumble.”

  “I cannot understand you!”

  “I SAID I GOT A PACKAGE HERE FOR MISSUS MELISANDE DURR, DAMN IT!”

  She opened the door all the way. Outside, there was a deliveryman with a big crate, almost as big as he was, say, Five feet, nine inches tall. It had her name and address on it. She signed for it, as the deliveryman pushed it inside the door and left, still mumbling. Melisande stood in her living room and looked at the crate.

  She thought: Who would send me a gift out of the blue for no reason at all? Not Frank, not Harry, not Aunt Emmie or Ellie, not Mom, not Dad (of course not, silly, he’s five years dead, poor son of a bitch) or anyone I can think of. But maybe it’s not a gift; it could be a mean hoax, or a bomb intended for somebody else and sent wrong (or meant for me and sent right) or just a simple mistake.

  She read the various labels on the outside of the crate. The article had been sent from Stern’s department store. Melisande bent down and pulled out the cotter pin (cracking the tip of a fingernail) that immobilized the Saftee-Lok, removed that and pushed the lever to OPEN.

  The crate blossomed like a flower, opening into twelve equal segments, each of which began to fold back on itself.

  “Wow,” Melisande said.

  The crate opened to its fullest extent and the folded segments curled inward and consumed themselves, leaving a double handful of cold fine gray ash.

  “They still haven’t licked that ash problem,” Melisande muttered. “However…”

  She looked with curiosity at the object that had resided within the crate. At first glance, it was a cylinder of metal painted orange and red. A machine? Yes, definitely a machine; air vents in the base for its motor, four rubber-clad wheels, and various attachments—longitudinal extensors, prehensile extractors, all sorts of things. And there were connecting points to allow a variety of mixed-function operations, and a standard house-type plug at the end of a springloaded reel-fed power line, with a plaque beneath it that read: PLUG INTO ANY 110-115-VOLT WALL OUTLET.

  Melisande’s face tightened in anger. “It’s a goddamned vacuum cleaner! For God’s sake, I’ve already got a vacuum cleaner. Who in the hell would send me another?”

  She paced up and down the room, bright legs flashing, tension evident in her heart-shaped face. “I mean,” she said, “I was expecting that after all my expecting, I’d get something pretty and nice, or at least fun, maybe even interesting. Like oh God I don’t even know like what unless maybe an orange-and-red pinball machine, a big one, big enough so I could get inside all curled up and someone would start the game and I’d go bumping along all the bumpers while the lights flashed and bells rang and I’d bump a thousand goddamned bumpers and when I finally rolled down to the end I’d God yes that pinball machine would register a TOP MILLION MILLION and that’s what I’d really like!”

  So—the entire unspeakable fantasy was out in the open at last. And how bleak and remote it felt, yet still shameful and desirable.

  “But anyhow,” she said, canceling the previous image and folding, spindling, and mutilating it for good measure, “anyhow, what I get is a lousy goddamned vacuum cleaner when I already have one less than three years old so who needs this one and who sent me the damned thing anyway and why?”

  She looked to see if there was a card. No card. Not a clue. And then she thought, Sandy, you are really a goop! Of course, there’s no card; the machine has doubtless been programmed to recite some message or other.

  She was interested now, in a mild, something-to-do kind of way. She unreeled the power line and plugged it into a wall outlet.

  Click! A green light flashed on, a blue light glittered ALL SYSTEMS GO, a motor purred, hidden servos made tapping noises; and then the mechanopathic regulator registered BALANCE and a gentle pink light beamed a steady ALL MODES READY.

  “All right,” Melisande said. “Who sent you?”

  Snap crackle pop. Experimental rumble from the thoracic voice box. Then the voice: “I am Rom, number 121376 of GE’s new Q-series Home-rizers. The following is a paid commercial announcement: Ahem, General Electr
ic is proud to present the latest and most triumphant development of our Total Fingertip Control of Every Aspect of the Home for Better Living concept. I, Rom, am the latest and finest model in the GE Omnicleaner series. I am the Home-rizer Extraordinary, factory programmed like all Home-rizers for fast, unobtrusive multitotalfunction, but additionally, I am designed for easy, instant re-programming to suit your home’s individual needs. My abilities are many. I—”

  “Can we skip this?” Melisande asked. “That’s what my other vacuum cleaner said.”

  “—will remove all dust and grime from all surfaces,” the Rom went on, “wash dishes and pots and pans, exterminate cockroaches and rodents, dry-clean and hand-launder, sew buttons, build shelves, paint walls, cook, clean rugs, and dispose of all garbage and trash including my own modest waste products. And this is to mention but a few of my functions.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Melisande said. “All vacuum cleaners do that.”

  “I know,” said the Rom, “but I had to deliver my paid commercial announcement.”

  “Consider it delivered. Who sent you?”

  “The sender prefers not to reveal his name at this time,” the Rom replied.

  “Oh—come on and tell me!”

  “Not at this time,” the Rom replied staunchly. “Shall I vacuum the rug?”

  Melisande shook her head. “The other vacuum cleaner did it this morning.”

  “Scrub the walls? Rub the halls?”

  “No reason for it, everything has been done, everything is absolutely and spotlessly clean.”

  “Well,” the Rom said, “at least I can remove that stain.”

  “What stain?”

  “On the arm of your blouse, just above the elbow.”

  Melisande looked. “Ooh, I must have done that when I buttered the toast this morning. I knew I should have let the toaster do it.”

  “Stain removal is rather a specialty of mine,” the Rom said. He extruded a number-two padded gripper, with which he gripped her elbow, and then extruded a metal arm terminating in a moistened gray pad. With this pad, he stroked the stain.

  “You’re making it worse!”