Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

by Robert Sheckley

  After an eternity of peril, they reached the top and started down the other side—

  And Flame slipped!

  In horror Baxter watched the slender girl fall to her doom in Times Square, to die impaled upon the needle-sharp point of a car’s aerial. Baxter scrambled down and knelt beside her, almost out of his head with grief.

  And, on the other side of the wall, old Pablo sensed that something irrevocable had happened. He shuddered, his mouth writhed in anticipation of grief, and he reached blindly for a bottle.

  Strong hands lifted Baxter to his feet. Uncomprehendingly, he looked up into the kindly red face of the Federal land clerk.

  It was difficult for him to realize that he had completed the race. With curiously deadened emotions, he heard how St. John’s pushiness and hauteur had caused a riot in the explosive Burmese Quarter of East 42nd Street, and how St. John had been forced to claim sanctuary in the labyrinthine ruins of the Public Library, from which refuge he still had not been able to extricate himself.

  But it was not in Steve Baxter’s nature to gloat, even when gloating was the only conceivable response. All that mattered to him was that he had won, had reached the Land Office in time to claim the last remaining acre of land.

  All it had cost was effort and pain, and the life of a young bandit girl.

  10

  Time was merciful; and some weeks later, Steve Baxter was not thinking of the tragic events of the race. A Government jet had transported him and his family to the town of Cormorant in the Sierra Nevada mountains. From Cormorant, a helicopter brought them to their prize. A leathery Land Office marshal was on hand to greet them and to point out their new freehold.

  Their land lay before them, sketchily fenced, on an almost vertical mountainside. Surrounding it were other similarly fenced acres, stretching as far as the eye could see. The land had recently been strip-mined; it existed now as a series of gigantic raw slashes across a dusty, dun-colored earth. Not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen. There was a house, as promised; more precisely, there was a shack. It looked as if it might last until the next hard rain.

  For a few minutes the Baxters stared in silence. Then Adele said, “Oh, Steve.”

  Steve said, “I know.”

  “It’s our new land,” Adele said.

  Steve nodded. “It’s not very—pretty,” he said hesitantly.

  “Pretty? What do we care about that?” Adele declared. “It’s ours, Steve, and there’s a whole acre of it! We can grow things here, Steve!”

  “Well, maybe not at first—”

  “I know, I know! But we’ll put this land back into shape, and then we’ll plant it and harvest it! We’ll live here, Steve! Won’t we?”

  Steve Baxter was silent, gazing over his dearly won land. His children—Tommy and blonde little Amelia—were playing with a clod of earth. The US marshal cleared his throat and said, “You can still change your mind, you know.”

  “What?” Steve asked.

  “You can still change your mind, go back to your apartment in the city. I mean, some folks think it’s sorta crude out here, sorta not what they was expecting.”

  “Oh, Steve, no!” his wife moaned.

  “No, Daddy, no!” his children cried.

  “Go back?” Baxter asked. “I wasn’t thinking of going back. I was just looking at it all. Mister, I never saw so much land all in one place in my whole life!”

  “I know,” the marshal said softly. “I been twenty years out here and the sight of it still gets to me.”

  Baxter and his wife looked at each other ecstatically. The marshal rubbed his nose and said, “Well, I reckon you folks won’t be needin’ me no more.” He exited unobtrusively.

  Steve and Adele gazed out over their land. Then Adele said, “Oh, Steve, Steve! It’s all ours! And you won it for us—you did it all by yourself!”

  Baxter’s mouth tightened. He said very quietly, “No, honey, I didn’t do it all alone. I had some help.”

  “Who, Steve? Who helped you?”

  “Some day I’ll tell you about it,” Baxter said. “But right now—let’s go into our house.”

  Hand in hand they entered the shack. Behind them, the sun was setting in the opaque Los Angeles smog. It was as happy an ending as could be found in the latter half of the twenty-first century.

  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 Blood-Stream 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 OK apartment, all beautiful outside and unborn inside, a lovely potential who had never been potentiated, a genuine US 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 Electric is proud to present the latest and most triumphant development of our Total Finger-Tip Control of Every Aspect of the Home for Better Living concept. I, Rom, am the latest and finest model in the GE omni-cleaner 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 reprogramming 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!”

  “Only apparently, while I line up the molecules for invisible eradication. All ready now; watch.”

  He continued to stroke. The spot faded, then disappeared utterly. Melisande’s arm tingled.

  “Gee,” she said, “that’s pretty good.”

  “I do it well,” the Rom stated flatly. “But tell me, were you aware that you are maintaining a tension factor of 78.3 in your upper back and shoulder muscles?”

  “Huh? Are you some kind of doctor?”

  “Obviously not. But I am a fully qualified masseur, and therefore able to take direct tonus readings. 78.3 is—unusual.” The Rom hesitated, then said, “It’s only eight points below the intermittent-spasm level. That much continuous background tension is capable of reflection to the stomach nerves, resulting in what we call a parasympathetic ulceration.”

  “That sounds—bad,” Melisande said.

  “Well, it’s admittedly not—good,” the Rom replied. “Background tension is an insidious underminer of health, especially when it originates along the neck vertebrae and the upper spine.”

  “Here?” Melisande asked, touching the back of her neck.

  “More typically here,” the Rom said, reaching out with a spring-steel rubber-clad dermal resonator and palpating an area twelve centimeters lower than the spot she had indicated.

  “Hmmm,” said Melisande, in a quizzical, uncommitted manner.

  “And here is another typical locus,” the Rom said, extending a second extensor.

  “That tickles,” Melisande told him.

  “Only at first. I must also mention this situs as characteristically troublesome. And this one.” A third (and possibly a fourth and fifth) extensor moved to the indicated areas.

  “Well.... That really is nice,” Melisande said as the deep-set trapezius muscles of her slender spine moved smoothly beneath the skillful padded prodding of the Rom.

  “It has recognized therapeutic effects,” the Rom told her. “And your musculature is responding well; I can feel a slackening of tonus already.”

  “I can feel it, too. But you know, I’ve just realized I have this funny bunched-up knot of muscle at the nape of my neck.”

  “I was coming to that. The spine-neck juncture is recognized as a primary radiation zone for a variety of diffuse tensions. But we prefer to attack it indirectly, routing our cancellation inputs through secondary loci. Like this. And now I think—”

  “Yes, yes, good.... Gee, I never realized I was tied up like that before. I mean, it’s like having a nest of live snakes under your skin, without having known.”

  “That’s what background tension is like,” the Rom said. “Insidious and wasteful, difficult to perceive, and more dangerous than an atypical ulnar thrombosis.... Yes, now we ha
ve achieved a qualitative loosening of the major spinal junctions of the upper back, and we can move on like this.”

  “Huh,” said Melisande, “isn’t that sort of—”

  “It is definitely indicated,” the Rom said quickly. “Can you detect a change?”

  “No! Well, maybe.... Yes! There really is! I feel—easier.”

  “Excellent. Therefore, we continue the movement along well-charted nerve and muscle paths, proceeding always in a gradual manner, as I am doing now.”

  “I guess so.... But I really don’t know if you should—”

  “Are any of the effects contraindicated?” the Rom asked.

  “It isn’t that, it all feels fine. It feels good. But I still don’t know if you ought to.... I mean, look, ribs can’t get tense, can they?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you—”

  “Because treatment is required by the connective ligaments and integuments.”

  “Oh. Hmmmm. Hey. Hey! Hey you!”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.... I can really feel that loosening. But is it all supposed to feel so good?”

  “Well—why not?”

  “Because it seems wrong. Because feeling good doesn’t seem therapeutic.”

  “Admittedly, it is a side effect,” the Rom said. “Think of it as a secondary manifestation. Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health. But it is nothing to be alarmed about, not even when I—”

  “Now just a minute!”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you just better cut that out. I mean to say, there are limits, you can’t palpate every damned thing. You know what I mean?”

  “I know that the human body is unitary and without seam or separation,” the Rom replied. “Speaking as a physical therapist, I know that no nerve center can be isolated from any other, despite cultural taboos to the contrary.”

  “Yeah, sure, but—”

  “The decision is, of course, yours,” the Rom went on, continuing his skilled manipulations. “Order and I obey. But if no order is issued, I continue like this....”