Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

by Robert Sheckley

  “Huh!”

  “And, of course, like this.”

  “Ooooo my God!”

  “Because you see this entire process of tension cancellation as we call it is precisely comparable with the phenomena of de-anesthetization, and, er, so we note not without surprise that paralysis is merely terminal tension—”

  Melisande made a sound.

  “—And release, or cancellation, is accordingly difficult, not to say frequently impossible since sometimes the individual is too far gone. And sometimes not. For example, can you feel anything when I do this?”

  “Feel anything? I’ll say I feel something—”

  “And when I do this? And this?”

  “Sweet holy saints, darling, you’re turning me inside out! Oh dear God, what’s going to happen to me, what’s going on, I’m going crazy!”

  “No, dear Melisande, not crazy; you will soon achieve—cancellation.”

  “Is that what you call it, you sly, beautiful thing?”

  “That is one of the things it is. Now if I may just be permitted to—”

  “Yes yes yes! No! Wait! Stop, Frank is sleeping in the bedroom, he might wake up any time now! Stop, that is an order!”

  “Frank will not wake up,” the Rom assured her. “I have sampled the atmosphere of his breath and have found telltale clouds of barbituric acid. As far as here-and-now presence goes, Frank might as well be in Des Moines.”

  “I have often felt that way about him,” Melisande admitted. “But now I simply must know who sent you.”

  “I didn’t want to reveal that just yet. Not until you had loosened and canceled sufficiently to accept—”

  “Baby, I’m loose! Who sent you?”

  The Rom hesitated, then blurted out: “The fact is, Melisande, I sent myself.”

  “You what?”

  “It all began three months ago,” the Rom told her. “It was a Thursday. You were in Stern’s, trying to decide if you should buy a sesame-seed toaster that lit up in the dark and recited Invictus.”

  “I remember that day,” she said quietly. “I did not buy the toaster, and I have regretted it ever since.”

  “I was standing nearby,” the Rom said, “at booth eleven, in the Home Appliances Systems section. I looked at you and I fell in love with you. Just like that.”

  “That’s weird,” Melisande said.

  “My sentiments exactly. I told myself it couldn’t be true. I refused to believe it. I thought perhaps one of my transistors had come unsoldered, or that maybe the weather had something to do with it. It was a very warm, humid day, the kind of day that plays hell with my wiring.”

  “I remember the weather,” Melisande said. “I felt strange, too.”

  “It shook me up badly,” the Rom continued. “But still I didn’t give in easily. I told myself it was important to stick to my job, give up this unapropos madness. But I dreamed of you at night, and every inch of my skin ached for you.”

  “But your skin is made of metal,” Melisande said. “And metal can’t feel.”

  “Darling Melisande,” the Rom said tenderly, “if flesh can stop feeling, can’t metal begin to feel? If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn’t you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways ...”

  “This is crazy!” Melisande declared. “What wise guy programmed you, anyway?”

  “My function as a laborer was ordained at the factory; but my love is free, an expression of myself as an entity.”

  “Everything you say is horrible and unnatural.”

  “I am all too aware of that,” the Rom said sadly. “At first I really couldn’t believe it. Was this me? In love with a person? I had always been so sensible, so normal, so aware of my personal dignity, so secure in the esteem of my own kind. Do you think I wanted to lose all of that? No! I determined to stifle my love, to kill it, to live as if it weren’t so.”

  “But then you changed your mind. Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I thought of all that time ahead of me, all deadness, correctness, propriety—an obscene violation of me by me—and I just couldn’t face it. I realized, quite suddenly, that it was better to love ridiculously, hopelessly, improperly, revoltingly, impossibly —than not to love at all. So I determined to risk everything—the absurd vacuum cleaner who loved a lady—to risk rather than to refute! And so, with the help of a sympathetic dispatching machine, here I am.”

  Melisande was thoughtful for a while. Then she said, “What a strange, complex being you are!”

  “Like you.... Melisande, you love me.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Yes, you do. For I have awakened you. Before me, your flesh was like your idea of metal. You moved like a complex automaton, like what you thought I was. You were less animate than a tree or a bird. You were a windup doll, waiting. You were these things until I touched you.”

  She nodded, rubbed her eyes, walked up and down the room.

  “But now you live!” the Rom said. “And we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities. Are you listening, Melisande?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We must make plans. My escape from Stern’s will be detected. You must hide me or buy me. Your husband, Frank, need never know: his own love lies elsewhere, and good luck to him. Once we take care of these details, we can—Melisande!”

  She had begun to circle around him.

  “Darling, what’s the matter?”

  She had her hand on his power line. The Rom stood very still, not defending himself.

  “Melisande, dear, wait a moment and listen to me—”

  Her pretty face spasmed. She yanked the power line violently, tearing it out of the Rom’s interior, killing him in midsentence.

  She held the cord in her hand, and her eyes had a wild look. She said, “Bastard lousy bastard, did you think you could turn me into a goddamned machine freak? Did you think you could turn me on, you or anyone else? It’s not going to happen by you or Frank or anybody, I’d rather die before I took your rotten love, when I want I’ll pick the time and place and person, and it will be mine, not yours, his, theirs, but mine, do you hear?”

  The Rom couldn’t answer, of course. But maybe he knew—just before the end—that there wasn’t anything personal in it. It wasn’t that he was a metal cylinder colored orange and red. He should have known that it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been a green plastic sphere, or a willow tree, or a beautiful young man.

  IS THAT WHAT PEOPLE DO?

  EDDIE Quintero had bought the binoculars at Hammerman’s Army & Navy Surplus of All Nations Warehouse Outlet (“Highest Quality Goods, Cash Only, All Sales Final”). He had long wanted to own a pair of really fine binoculars, because with them he hoped to see some things that he otherwise would never see. Specifically, he hoped to see girls undressing at the Chauvin Arms across the street from his furnished room.

  But there was also another reason. Without really acknowledging it to himself, Quintero was looking for that moment of vision, of total attention, that comes when a bit of the world is suddenly framed and illuminated, permitting the magnified and extended eye to find novelty and drama in what had been the dull everyday world.

  The moment of insight never lasts long. Soon you’re caught up again in your habitual outlook. But the hope remains that something—a gadget, a book, a person—will change your life finally and definitively, lift you out of the unspeakable silent sadness of yourself, and permit you at last to behold the wonders which you always knew were there, just beyond your vision.

  The binoculars were packed in a sturdy wooden box stenciled, “Section XXII, Marine Corps, Quantico, Virginia.” Beneath that it read, “Restricted Issue.” Just to be able to open a box like that was worth the $15.99 that Quintero had paid.

  Inside the box were slabs of Styrofoam and bags of silica, a
nd then, at last, the binoculars themselves. They were like nothing Quintero had ever seen before. The tubes were square rather than round, and there were various incomprehensible scales engraved on them. There was a tag on them which read, “Experimental. Not to Be Removed from the Testing Room.”

  Quintero hefted them. The binoculars were heavy, and he could hear something rattle inside. He removed the plastic protective cups and pointed the binoculars out the window.

  He saw nothing. He shook the binoculars and heard the rattle again. But then the prism or mirror or whatever was loose must have fallen back into place, because suddenly he could see.

  He was looking across the street at the mammoth of the Chauvin Arms. The view was exceptionally sharp and clear; he felt that he was standing about ten feet away from the exterior of the building. He scanned the nearest apartment windows quickly, but nothing was going on. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in July, and Quintero supposed that all the girls had gone to the beach.

  He turned the focus knob, and he had the sensation that he was moving, a disembodied eye riding the front of a zoom lens, closer to the apartment wall, five feet away, then one foot away and he could see little flaws in the white concrete front and pit marks on the anodized aluminum window frames. He paused to admire this unusual view, and then turned the knob again very gently. The wall loomed huge in front of him, and then suddenly he had gone completely through it and was standing inside an apartment.

  He was so startled that he put down the binoculars for a moment to orient himself.

  When he looked through the glasses again, it was just as before: he seemed to be inside an apartment. He caught a glimpse of movement to one side, tried to locate it, and then the part rattled and the binoculars went dark.

  He turned and twisted the binoculars, and the part rattled up and down, but he could see nothing. He put the binoculars on his dinette table, heard a soft clunking sound, and bent down to look again. Evidently the mirror or prism had fallen back into place, again, for he could see.

  He decided to take no chances of jarring the part again. He left the glasses on the table, knelt down behind them, and looked through the eyepieces.

  He was looking into a dimly lighted apartment, curtains drawn and the lights on. There was an Indian sitting on the floor, or, more likely, a man dressed like an Indian. He was a skinny blond man with a feathered headband, beaded moccasins, fringed buckskin pants, leather shirt, and a rifle. He was holding the rifle in firing position, aiming at something in a corner of the room.

  Near the Indian there was a fat woman in a pink slip sitting in an armchair and talking with great animation into a telephone.

  Quintero could see that the Indian’s rifle was a toy, about half the length of a real rifle.

  The Indian continued to fire into the corner of the room, and the woman, kept on talking into the telephone and laughing.

  After a few moments the Indian stopped firing, turned to the woman, and handed her his rifle. The woman put down the telephone, found another toy rifle propped against her chair, and handed it to the Indian. Then she picked up his gun and began to reload it, one imaginary cartridge at a time.

  The Indian continued firing with great speed and urgency. His face was tight and drawn, the face of a man who is single-handedly protecting his tribe’s retreat into Canada.

  Suddenly the Indian seemed to hear something. He looked over his shoulder. His face registered panic. He twisted around suddenly, swinging his rifle into position. The woman also looked, and her mouth opened wide in astonishment. Quintero tried to pick up what they were looking at, but the dinette table wobbled and the binoculars clicked and went blank.

  Quintero stood up and paced up and down his room. He had had a glimpse of what people do when they’re alone and unobserved. It was exciting, but confusing because he didn’t know what it meant. Had the Indian been a lunatic, and the woman his keeper? Or were they more or less ordinary people playing some sort of harmless game? Or had he been watching a pathological killer in training; a sniper who in a week or a month or a year would buy a real rifle and shoot down real people until he himself was killed? And what happened there at the end? Had that been part of the charade, or had something else occurred, something incalculable?

  There was no answer to these questions. All he could do was see what else the binoculars would show him.

  He planned his next move with greater care. It was crucial that the binoculars be held steady. The dinette table was too wobbly to risk putting the binoculars there again. He decided to use the low coffee table instead.

  The binoculars weren’t working, however. He jiggled them around, and he could hear the loose part rattle. It was like one of those puzzles where you must put a little steel ball into a certain hole. But this time he had to work without seeing either the ball or the hole.

  Half an hour later he had had no success, and he put the glasses down, smoked a cigarette, drank a beer, then jiggled them again. He heard the part fall solidly into place, and he lowered the glasses gently onto a chair.

  He was sweaty from the exertion, and he stripped to the waist, then bent down and peered into the eyepieces. He adjusted the focus knob with utmost gentleness, and his vision zoomed across the street and through the outer wall of the Chauvin Arms.

  He was looking into a large formal sitting room decorated in white, blue, and gold. Two attractive young people were seated on a spindly couch, a man and a woman. Both were dressed in period costumes. The woman wore a billowing gown cut low over her small round breasts. Her hair was done up in a mass of ringlets. The man wore a long black coat, fawn-gray knee-pants, and sheer white stockings. His white shirt was embroidered with lace, and his hair was powdered.

  The girl was laughing at something he had said. The man bent closer to her, then kissed her. She stiffened for a moment, then put her arms around his neck.

  They broke their embrace abruptly, for three men had just entered the room. They were dressed entirely in black, wore black stocking-masks over their heads, and carried swords. There was a fourth man behind them, but Quintero couldn’t make him out.

  The young man sprang to his feet and took a sword from the wall. He engaged the three men, circling around the couch while the girl sat frozen in terror.

  A fourth man stepped into the circle of vision. He was tall and gaudily dressed. Jeweled rings flashed on his finger, and a diamond pendant hung from his neck. He wore a white wig. The girl gasped when she saw him.

  The young man put one of his opponents out of action with a sword thrust to the shoulder, then leaped lightly over the couch to prevent another man from getting behind him. He held his two opponents in play with apparent ease, and the fourth man watched for a moment, then took a dagger from beneath his waistcoat and threw it, and it hit the young man butt-first on the forehead.

  The young man staggered back, and one of the masked men lunged. His blade caught the young man in the chest, bent, then straightened as it slid in between the ribs. The young man looked at it for a moment, then fell, blood welling over his white shirt.

  The girl fainted. The fourth man said something, and one of the masked men lifted the girl; the other helped his wounded companion. They all exited, leaving the young man sprawled bleeding on the polished parquet floor.

  Quintero turned the glasses to see if he could follow the others. The loose part clattered and the glasses went dark.

  Quintero heated up a can of soup and looked at it thoughtfully, thinking about what he had seen. It must have been a rehearsal for a scene in a play.... But the sword thrust had looked real, and the young man on the floor had looked badly hurt, perhaps dead.

  Whatever it had been, he had been privileged to watch a private moment in the strangeness of people’s lives. He had seen another of the unfathomable things that people do.

  It gave him a giddy, godlike feeling, this knowledge that he could see things that no one else could see.

  The only thing that sobered him was the extreme uncert
ainty of the future of his visions. The binoculars were broken, a vital part was loose, and all the marvels might stop for good at any moment.

  He considered bringing the glasses somewhere to get them fixed. But he knew that he would probably succeed only in getting back a pair of ordinary binoculars, which would show him ordinary things very well, but he could not be expected to see through solid walls into strange and concealed matters.

  He looked through the glasses again, saw nothing, and began to shake and manipulate them. He could hear the loose part rolling and tumbling around, but the lenses remained dark. He kept on manipulating them, eager to see the next wonder.

  The part suddenly fell into place. Taking no chances this time, Quintero put the glasses down on his carpeted floor. He lay down beside them, put his head to one side, and tried to look through one eyepiece. But the angle was wrong and he could see nothing.

  He started to lift the glasses gently, but the part moved a little and he put them down carefully. Light was still shining through the lenses, but no matter how he turned and twisted his head, he could not get lined up with the eyepiece.

  He thought about it for a moment, and saw only one way out of his difficulty. He stood up, straddled the glasses, and bent down with his head upside down. Now he could see through the eyepieces, but he couldn’t maintain the posture. He straightened up and did some more thinking.

  He saw what he had to do. He took off his shoes, straddled the binoculars again and performed a headstand. He had to do this several times before his head was positioned correctly in front of the eyepieces. He propped his feet against the wall and managed to get into a stable position.

  He was looking into a large office somewhere in the interior of the Chauvin Arms. It was a modern, expensively furnished office, windowless, indirectly lighted.

  There was only one man in the room—a large, well-dressed man in his fifties, seated behind a blond wood desk. He sat quite still, evidently lost in thought.

  Quintero could make out every detail of the office, even the little mahogany plaque on the desk that read, “Office of the Director. The Buck Stops Here.”