The People Trap

by Sheckley, Robert;

  Lanigan looked around the room, counted the five pictures on the wall, recounted them, looked at the green carpet, frowned at it, closed his eyes again. This time he counted to fifty.

  “Well, care to talk about it?” Sampson asked, closing the notebook.

  “No, not just now,” Lanigan said. (Five paintings, green carpet.)

  “Just as you please,” the doctor said. “I think our time is just about up. But if you would like to lie down in the anteroom…”

  “No thanks, I’ll go home,” Lanigan said.

  He stood up, walked across the green carpet to the door, looked back at the five paintings and at the doctor, who smiled at him encouragingly. Then Lanigan went through the door and into the anteroom, through the anteroom to the outer door, and through that and down the corridor to the stairs and down the stairs to the street.

  He walked and looked at the trees, on which green leaves moved faintly and predictably in a faint breeze. There was traffic, which moved soberly down one side of the street and up the other. The sky was an unchanging blue and had obviously been so for quite some time.

  Dream? He pinched himself; a dream pinch? He did not awaken. He shouted; an imaginary shout? He did not waken.

  He was in the familiar territory of his nightmare. But it had lasted far longer than any of the others. Ergo, it was no longer a dream. (A dream is the shorter life, a life is the longer dream.) Lanigan had made the transition; or the transition had made Lanigan. The impossible had happened by the simple expedient of happening.

  The pavement never once yielded beneath his feet. Over there was the First National City Bank; it had been there yesterday, it would be there tomorrow. Grotesquely devoid of possibilities, it would never become a tomb, an airplane, or the bones of a prehistoric monster. Sullenly it would remain, a building of concrete and steel, madly persisting in its fixity until men with tools came and tediously tore it down.

  Lanigan walked through this petrified world, under a blue sky that oozed a coy white around the edges, promising something it could never deliver. Traffic moved to the right, people crossed at crossings, clocks were within minutes of agreement.

  Somewhere beyond the town lay the countryside; but Lanigan knew that the grass did not grow under one’s feet; it simply lay there, growing no doubt, but imperceptibly, unusable to the senses. And the mountains were still black and tall, but they were giants stopped in mid-stride, destined never to march against a golden (or purple or green) sky.

  This was the frozen world. This was the slow-motion world of preordination, routine, habituation. This was the world in which the eerie quality of boredom-was not only possible; it was inevitable. This was the world in which change, that quicksilver substance, had been reduced to a sluggish and reluctant glue.

  Because of this, the magic of a phenomenal world was no longer possible. And without magic, no one could live.

  Lanigan screamed. He screamed while people gathered around and looked at him (but didn’t do anything or become anything), and then a policeman came, as he was supposed to (but the sun didn’t change shape once), and then an ambulance rushed down the invariable street (but without trumpets, minus strumpets, on four wheels instead of a pleasing three or twenty-five) and the ambulance men took him to a building which was exactly where they expected to find it, and there was a great deal of talk by people who stood, untransformed and untransformable, asking him questions in a room with relentlessly white walls.

  They prescribed rest, quiet, sedation. This, horribly enough, was the very poison which Lanigan had been trying to throw out of his system. Naturally they gave him an overdose.

  He didn’t die; it wasn’t that good a poison. Instead, he became completely insane. He was discharged three weeks later, a model patient and a model cure.

  Now he walks around and believes that change is impossible. He has become a masochist; he revels in the insolent regularity of things. He has become a sadist; he preaches to others the divine mechanical order of things. He has completely assimilated his insanity or the world’s, in all ways except one. He is not happy. Order and happiness are contradictions which the universe has not succeeded in reconciling as yet.

  DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY

  “Come right in, gentlemen,” the Ambassador waved them into the very special suite the State Department had given him. “Please be seated.”

  Colonel Cercy accepted a chair, trying to size up the individual who had all Washington chewing its fingernails. The Ambassador hardly looked like a menace. He was of medium height and slight build, dressed in a conservative brown tweed suit that the State Department had given him. His face was intelligent, finely molded and aloof.

  As human as a human, Cercy thought, studying the alien with bleak, impersonal eyes.

  “How may I serve you?” the Ambassador asked, smiling.

  “The President has put me in charge of your case,” Cercy said. “I’ve studied Professor Darrig’s reports”—he nodded at the scientist beside him—”but I’d like to hear the whole thing for myself.”

  “Of course,” the alien said, lighting a cigarette. He seemed genuinely pleased to be asked; which was interesting, Cercy thought. In the week since he had landed, every important scientist in the country had been at him.

  But in a pinch they call the Army, Cercy reminded himself. He settled back in his chair, both hands jammed carelessly into his pockets. His right hand was resting on the butt of a .45, the safety off.

  “I have come,” the alien said, “as an ambassador-at-large, representing an empire that stretches halfway across the galaxy. I wish to extend the welcome of my people and to invite you to join our organization.”

  “I see,” Cercy replied. “Some of the scientists got the impression that participation was compulsory.”

  “You will join,” the Ambassador said, blowing smoke through his nostrils.

  Cercy could see Darrig stiffen in his chair and bite his lips. Cercy moved the automatic to a position where he could draw it easily. “How did you find us?” he asked.

  “We ambassadors-at-large are each assigned an unexplored section of space,” the alien said. “We examine each star system in that region for planets, and each planet for intelligent life. Intelligent is rare in the galaxy, you know.”

  Cercy nodded, although he hadn’t been aware of the fact.

  “When we find such a planet, we land, as I did, and prepare the inhabitants for their part in our organization.”

  “How will your people know that you have found intelligent life?” Cercy asked.

  “There is a sending mechanism that is part of our structure,” the Ambassador answered. “It is triggered when we reach an inhabited planet. This signal is beamed continually into space, to an effective range of several thousand light-years. Follow-up crews are continually sweeping through the limits of the reception area of each ambassador, listening for such messages. Detecting one, a colonizing team follows it to the planet.”

  He tapped his cigarette delicately on the edge of an ashtray. “This method has definite advantages over sending combined colonization and exploration teams, obviously. It avoids the necessity of equipping large forces for what may be decades of searching.”

  “Sure.” Cercy’s face was expressionless. “Would you tell me more about this message?”

  “There isn’t much more you need know. The beam is not detectable by your methods and, therefore, cannot be jammed. The message continues as long as I am alive.”

  Darrig drew in his breath sharply, glancing at Cercy.

  “If you stopped broadcasting,” Cercy said casually, “our planet would never be found.”

  “Not until this section of space was resurveyed,” the diplomat agreed.

  “Very well. As a duly appointed representative of the President of the United States, I ask you to stop transmitting. We don’t choose to become part of your empire.”

  “I’m sorry,” the Ambassador said. He shrugged his shoulders easily. Cercy wondered how many times
he had played this scene on how many other planets.

  “There really is nothing I can do.” He stood up.

  “Then you won’t stop?”

  “I can’t. I have no control over the sending once it’s activated.” The diplomat turned and walked to the window. “However, I have prepared a philosophy for you. It is my duty, as your ambassador, to ease the shock of transition as much as possible. This philosophy will make it instantly apparent that—”

  As the Ambassador reached the window, Cercy’s gun was out of his pocket and roaring. He squeezed six rounds in almost a single explosion, aiming at the Ambassador’s head and back. Then an uncontrollable shudder ran through him.

  The Ambassador was no longer there!

  Cercy and Darrig stared at each other. Darrig muttered something about ghosts. Then, just as suddenly, the Ambassador was back.

  “You didn’t think,” he said, “that it would be as easy as all that, did you? We ambassadors have, necessarily, a certain diplomatic immunity.” He fingered one of the bullet holes in the wall. “In case you don’t understand, let me put it this way: it is not in your power to kill me. You couldn’t even understand the nature of my defense.”

  He looked at them, and in that moment Cercy felt the Ambassador’s complete alienness.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” he said.

  Darrig and Cercy walked silently back to the control room. Neither had really expected that the Ambassador would be killed so easily, but it had still been a shock when the slugs had failed.

  “I suppose you saw it all, Malley?” Cercy asked when he reached the control room.

  The thin, balding psychiatrist nodded sadly. “Got it on film, too.”

  “I wonder what his philosophy is,” Darrig mused, half to himself.

  “It was illogical to expect it would work. No race would send an ambassador with a message like that and expect him to live through it. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless he had a pretty effective defense,” the psychiatrist finished unhappily.

  Cercy walked across the room and looked at the video panel. The Ambassador’s suite was very special. It had been hurriedly constructed two days after he had landed and delivered his message. The suite was steel-and lead-lined, filled with video and movie cameras, recorders, and a variety of other things.

  It was the last word in elaborate death cells.

  In the screen, Cercy could see the Ambassador sitting at a table. He was typing on a little portable the Government had given him.

  “Hey, Harrison!” Cercy called. “Might as well go ahead with Plan Two.”

  Harrison came out of a side room where he had been examining the circuits leading to the Ambassador’s suite. Methodically he checked his pressure gauges, set the controls and looked at Cercy. “Now?” he asked.

  “Now.” Cercy watched the screen. The Ambassador was still typing.

  Suddenly, as Harrison sent home the switch, the room was engulfed in flames. Fire blasted out of concealed holes in the walls, poured from the ceiling and floor.

  In a moment, the room was like the inside of a blast furnace.

  Cercy let it burn for two minutes, then motioned Harrison to cut the switch. They stared at the roasted room.

  They were looking, hopefully, for a charred corpse.

  But the Ambassador reappeared beside his desk, looking ruefully at the charred typewriter. He was completely unsinged.

  “Could you get me another typewriter?” he asked, looking directly at one of the hidden projectors. “I’m setting down a philosophy for you ungrateful wretches.”

  He seated himself in the wreckage of an armchair. In a moment, he was apparently asleep.

  “All right, everyone grab a seat,” Cercy said. “Time for a council of war.”

  Malley straddled a chair backwards. Harrison lighted a pipe as he sat down, slowly puffing it into life.

  “Now then,” Cercy said. “The Government has dropped this squarely in our laps. We have to kill the Ambassador—obviously. I’ve been put in charge.” Cercy grinned with regret. “Probably because no one higher up wants the responsibility of failure. And I’ve selected you three as my staff. We can have anything we want, any assistance or advice we need. All right. Any ideas?”

  “How about Plan Three?” Harrison asked.

  “We’ll get to that,” Cercy said. “But I don’t believe it’s going to work.”

  “I don’t either,” Darrig agreed. “We don’t even know the nature of his defense.”

  “That’s the first order of business. Malley, take all our data so far, and get someone to feed it into the Derichman Analyzer. You know the stuff we want. What properties has X, if X can do thus and thus?”

  “Right,” Malley said. He left, muttering something about the ascendency of the physical sciences.

  “Harrison,” Cercy asked, “is Plan Three set up?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give it a try.”

  While Harrison was making his last adjustments, Cercy watched Darrig. The plump little physicist was staring thoughtfully into space, muttering to himself. Cercy hoped he would come up with something. He was expecting great things of Darrig.

  Knowing the impossibility of working with great numbers of people, Cercy had picked his staff with care. Quality was what he wanted.

  With that in mind, he had chosen Harrison first. The stocky, sour-faced engineer had a reputation for being able to build anything, given half an idea of how it worked.

  Cercy had selected Malley, the psychiatrist, because he wasn’t sure that killing the Ambassador was going to be a purely physical problem.

  Darrig was a mathematical physicist, but his restless, curious mind had come up with some interesting theories in other fields. He was the only one of the four who was really interested in the Ambassador as an intellectual problem.

  “He’s like Metal Old Man,” Darrig said finally.

  “What’s that?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the story of Metal Old Man? Well, he was a monster covered with black metal armor. He was met by Monster-Slayer, an Apache culture hero. Monster-Slayer, after many attempts, finally killed Metal Old Man.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Shot him in the armpit. He didn’t have any armor there.”

  “Fine,” Cercy grinned. “Ask our Ambassador to raise his arm.”

  “All set!” Harrison called.

  “Fine. Go.”

  In the Ambassador’s room, an invisible spray of gamma rays silently began to flood the room with deadly radiation.

  But there was no Ambassador there to receive them.

  “That’s enough,” Cercy said after a while. “That would kill a herd of elephants.”

  But the Ambassador stayed invisible for five hours, until some of the radioactivity had abated. Then he appeared again.

  “I’m still waiting for that typewriter,” he said.

  “Here’s the Analyzer’s report.” Malley handed Cercy a sheaf of papers. “This is the final formulation, boiled down.”

  Cercy read it aloud: “The simplest defense against any and all weapons is to become each particular weapon.”

  “Great,” Harrison said. “What does it mean?”

  “It means,” Darrig explained, “that when we attack the Ambassador with fire, he turns into fire. Shoot at him, and he turns into a bullet—until the menace is gone, and then he changes back again.” He took the papers out of Cercy’s hand and riffled through them.

  “Hmm. Wonder if there’s any historical parallel? Don’t suppose so.” He raised his head. “Although this isn’t conclusive, it seems logical enough. Any other defense would involve recognition of the weapon first, then an appraisal, then a counter-move predicated on the potentialities of the weapon. The Ambassador’s defense would be a lot faster and safer. He wouldn’t have to recognize the weapon. I suppose his body simply identifies, in some way, with the menace at hand.”

  “Did the Analyzer say
there was any way of breaking this defense?” Cercy asked.

  “The Analyzer stated definitely that there was no way, if the premise were true,” Malley answered gloomily.

  “We can discard that judgment,” Darrig said. “The machine is limited.”

  “But we still haven’t got any way of stopping him,” Malley pointed out. “And he’s still broadcasting that beam.”

  Cercy thought for a moment. “Call in every expert you can find. We’re going to throw the book at the Ambassador. I know,” he said, looking at Darrig’s dubious expression, “but we have to try.”

  During the next few days, every combination and permutation of death was thrown at the Ambassador. He was showered with weapons, ranging from Stone Age axes to modem high-powered rifles, peppered with hand grenades, drowned in acid, suffocated in poison gas.

  He kept shrugging his shoulders philosophically and continued to work on the new typewriter they had given him.

  Bacteria was piped in, first the known germ diseases, then mutated species.

  The diplomat didn’t even sneeze.

  He was showered with electricity, radiation, wooden weapons, iron weapons, copper weapons, brass weapons, uranium weapons—anything and everything, just to cover all possibilities.

  He didn’t suffer a scratch, but his room looked as though a barroom brawl had been going on in it continually for fifty years.

  Malley was working on an idea of his own, as was Darrig. The physicist interrupted himself long enough to remind Cercy of the Baldur myth. Baldur had been showered with every kind of weapon and remained unscathed, because everything on Earth had promised to love him. Everything except the mistletoe. When a little twig of it was shot at him, he died.

  Cercy turned away impatiently, but had an order of mistletoe sent up, just in case.

  It was, at least, no less effective, than the explosive shells or the bow and arrow. It did nothing except lend an oddly festive air to the battered room.

  After a week of this, they moved the unprotesting Ambassador into a newer, bigger, stronger death cell. They were unable to venture into his old one because of radioactivity and microorganisms.