The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Now if there were…aw, ridiculous, of course…but, say, if there actually were beings who came from the stars; and if there were intentions of taking over the whole pasture and all the cattle in it…

  Well!

  I am Dr. Ralph Kennedy, Director of the Department of Extraterrestrial Vocational Research, Division of Extraterrestrial Psychology, Bureau of Extraterrestrial Life Research—with the secret mission of keeping them from doing it.

  Right there in the middle.

  SIX

  These two little pieces of the jigsaw puzzle came to my attention much later; too late to be of any use. Although, in all honesty, even had I known these happenings in the Sheridan House, they would have carried no meaning to me. Only through hindsight would I have seen any connection between the reactions of a bellhop and the Black Fleet with the Red Ray. Later, the boys told me of their decision made in Room 842, but had I actually been listening I doubt my reaction would have been much different from that of the bellhop.

  Chronologically, however, the puzzle pieces fit in here.

  Sheridan House, New York, was a moderately fashionable hotel on Sixty-fourth Street, just off Central Park. The Night Manager, a shade more fashionable than even the hotel, was pleased with the evening. All was serene, and he was at his best in Serenity. There had been no emergencies and no complaints. There had been no indiscretions—none blatant enough, at least, to attract the attention of the vice squad. His nightly report, subtly worded to imply all this was due to his superior control, would please top management.

  It was unfortunate that the bellhop had to mar the serenity. It was unfortunate that a hotel had to have bellhops.

  In the late, late evening this bellhop shuffled across the lobby from the elevator and showed a pronounced list in his walk. There was a rule, a most stringent rule, that bellhops must not drink on the job, not even to please a lonesome guest, or one who enjoyed causing the lower orders to lose their jobs. The Night Manager pursed his lips ominously and waited behind his hotel desk.

  The bellhop leaned forward in his walk and made groping movements with his hands. He wet his lips at short, rhythmic intervals. There were large drops of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes protruded like those of a deep-sea fish suddenly hauled to the surface. When he reached the desk, he leaned his stomach against it and released his breath in a long, slow, fizzing sound.

  “Jeez…” he breathed heavily.

  The Night Manager stiffened further at this breach of manners, but he withheld reproof in the shocked realization that there was no alcohol in the generous waft of breath which came across the desk.

  “Well, what is it?” he demanded. But his curiosity somewhat softened the intended tone of discipline.

  The bellhop gulped and swallowed another mouthful of air.

  “I—I better go home now.”

  The Night Manager’s right eyebrow arched in skepticism. This was more familiar ground. Bellhops were always finding some reason why they couldn’t finish out their shifts on slow, tipless nights.

  “Must be my eyes, or my stomach,” the bellhop whispered, awe-stricken. “Yeah, it could be my stomach, couldn’t it?”

  “How should I know?” the Night Manager asked with asperity. He always found the frank fascination of the lower orders with their viscera disgusting.

  “I don’t feel so good. Could I—” The bellhop’s green tinged face showed that even he was abashed at his own temerity. “Could I sit down somewhere?”

  The request was so enormous that the Night Manager found himself nodding in stunned acquiescence toward the sanctuary of his own office, which opened behind the desk. He followed the bellhop into the office and watched him collapse into a chair. Unwillingly, he was impressed.

  “What’s the story this time?” he asked, and knew that curiosity had become ascendant to disbelief.

  The story came out in breathless spurts. A bar-service call from 842. One manhattan, one old-fashioned. He had knocked on the door, quietly because it was getting late. He must have heard the command to enter. Must have heard it, although he couldn’t remember hearing it. Anyway he entered. He didn’t enter no rooms unless he was asked. Musta been asked.

  “All right. All right!” the Night Manager prompted.

  One guy was sitting on the edge of the bed. Musta been a special bed, like some guests have to have, because it didn’t sag none. He had put the tray of drinks down on the table without looking around for anybody else. He never looked around a room when there was a call for two drinks and only one guy.…

  “I do not need to be instructed in hotel-service tact.” The Night Manager recaptured his asperity. “Go on.”

  “I’m just waitin’ for my tip, see, and this guy’s actin’ like he don’t know why I’m hangin’ around for. You know the old cheapie routine, and then— It couldn’t be my stomach, could it?” the bellhop broke off to plead.

  “Never mind! We can do without your stomach.”

  “The bathroom door opens. I’m expectin’ to see a dame. But this thing comes out.”

  “What thing?”

  “This purple thing. Sort of a purple light in the shape of a whirlwind, or maybe water going down the drain.”

  “Then you have been drinking after all,” the Night Manager exclaimed in disgust.

  “Honest, Mr. Thistlewaite. That’s what it looked like. A purple whirlwind. It came floating across the room toward me. I peed my pants, I betcha. I ain’t looked to see. Then, all at once, I figgered the gimmick. This was one of them stage magicians, tryin’ out his act on me. I didn’t know we booked no show people.”

  “We don’t. We certainly do not,” Mr. Thistlewaite said, with a shudder.

  “Well, he wasn’t one anyhow. No magician could do what happened next.” He gulped, and his jaw line began to green again.

  “For heaven’s sake, will you get to the point!”

  “This purple whirlwind turned into about four other guys. Just like that! So help me! Next thing I know, it’s only one other guy. But it’s like a picture that’s been exposed four times without moving only a little. One guy, only I could count him four times if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t. And I don’t think you do.”

  “That’s when I got outa there. He can have his lousy tip. Me, I’m sick at my stomach. I’m seein’ things. Maybe it’s my stomach, I think. Maybe it’s…”

  Mr. Thistlewaite breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing to spoil his nice report after all. This was elementary; purely elementary to any student of psychology, and every hotel employee is at least that.

  He glanced quickly out into the lobby to make sure that all was well, that no latecomers had stumbled into lobby chairs while they reoriented the swimming, tumbling world enough that they might find their way to the elevator. There were none. All was still serene. He faced the bellhop with a glow of anticipation. Now he could demonstrate why the bellhop was only a bellhop, while he, Mr. Thistlewaite, was a Night Manager.

  Reaching far back into the unfortunate lad’s Freudian infancy, Mr. Thistlewaite took off with a running start, sprinted through a sophomore psychology class at Columbia, soared through a pocketbook course in hallucination, spread his own theories concerning double brain lobe nonsynchronization and/or nerve synapses breaking circuit and instantaneously reclosing to create illusion of superimposure of memory upon memory; came down to earth again with a few digs about the effects of alcohol upon kidneys creating swimming sensations before the eyes; and broke the running record with dissertation on the shooting-lights effects of cirrhosis of the liver.

  A terrible thought struck him just as he breasted the finish line, and his voice trailed off. He hardly heard the bellhop’s admiring applause.

  “Can I go home now?” the boy was asking. “I don’t feel so good. I think maybe it’s something I ate.”

  For although Mr. Thistlewaite might be an accomplished avocationist in psychology, he was primarily a Night Manager, And it is the business of the Night Man
ager to form a mental picture of the hotel floor plan, floor by floor; to know which rooms are occupied and which are not, so that when a registering guest states his wants, there need be no fumbling about to see what the hotel may have to offer.

  And he was pretty sure that Room 842 was empty. He rushed out of his office to the key rack. There were the two keys. He sped over to the empties list. The room was empty. He riffled through the day’s registration cards. None showed a check-in to 842.

  He turned and stared suspiciously at the bellhop.

  The bellhop was not grinning.

  * * * *

  In 842 the Five, unregistered guests, were communing. They had correctly sommed this structure as shelter for travelers, and this room as unoccupied by any such travelers; but it had not occurred to them that one must register and pay. They could not yet grasp the idea that anywhere in the universe a life form could actually expect repayment for extending hospitality to a stranger. Indeed, the entire concept of commerce was still beyond their grasp. They knew of cannibalism, of course, but to find intelligent life feeding upon each other…

  “What is this stuff you’ve chosen from the list of refreshments our host offers?”

  “Basically alcohol. Its purpose is to deaden the senses.”

  “Why should any intelligent life wish to deaden its perceptions?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. If I were human, I think I might want my perceptions deadened permanently.”

  “You may have a point there. But then, have we found the intelligent species yet? In none of the random samples we’ve sommed…”

  “No concept of atomic science. Yet, vague knowledge that other planets of this little solar system have been reached. But really not much interest in it, and no knowledge at all of how it was done. Well, a vague recognition of space ships, but no appreciation whatever of how they work, to say nothing of how to build one.”

  “Yet space ships are built.”

  “So there must be an intelligent species, somewhere.”

  “Perhaps merely masquerading as a human being?”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  “That’s only one of the things we don’t comprehend, yet.”

  “Our four Black Fleet strikes have come to nothing.”

  “I som only the vaguest telepathy communication in this species. Random, disorganized, and undirected flashes.”

  “But they do have electronic communication. Highly organized. Why weren’t the visits of the Black Fleet electronically communicated?”

  “We’re in for quite a problem. We’ve always thought intelligence was characterized by the communication of knowledge. Here we find the emphasis is upon concealment of knowledge.”

  “The strikes of the Black Fleet were known. They were witnessed. We saw to that. I sommed the correct emotional reactions to them from the witnesses. I think we were correct in striking only remote spots where no damage to intelligent life…”

  “First rule: We cannot harm intelligent life.”

  “First question: How do we know we’ve found some?”

  “Our theory breaks down. We assumed unintelligent responses to the Black Fleet might be due to a lower order of species in remote areas, that the more intelligent might concentrate…”

  “This is one of the most intense concentrations. Would you say there was any qualitative difference of intelligence in the attendant who brought us these drinks and those who witnessed our strikes in remote areas?”

  “The same horror of the unknown.”

  “The same ability to cope with their environment barely well enough to stay alive.”

  “The similarities are endless. The differences are nil.”

  “We have not yet contacted intelligent life.”

  “These artifacts all around us show a high order of intelligence.”

  “There must be two species.”

  “For some reason the lower order is keeping the evidence of our visit from the knowledge of the higher order.”

  “Then we must make our strikes close to the areas of high-order artifacts. We must smoke out the intelligent species which conceals itself.”

  “It may take some doing. That concealment is extraordinary. None of the individuals we have sommed acknowledge intelligence beyond their own.”

  “That’s not the only thing we have to solve. If we are to masquerade as one of them, we’ve got some practice to do. They haven’t negated gravity, for example. I sommed the attendant’s surprise that the bed didn’t sag under your weight.”

  “We can’t afford that kind of error. If that one will detect such minor defects, think what a high order of intelligence might see.”

  “No more appearing as purple whirlwinds, either.”

  “We thought it might shock him into revealing knowledge of where the intelligent ones are to be found. That perhaps he was conspiring to conceal their presence. That perhaps they were intelligent enough to expect us and deemed it prudent to hide from us until they looked us over.”

  “That would be natural enough in the survival mechanism—if they were that intelligent. Surely their logic would tell them that when they started stirring in their egg it would be noticed—and investigated.”

  “But the attendant showed no knowledge of such a conspiracy of concealment.”

  “Certainly we will have to run the risk of accidentally harming intelligent life, by bringing our phenomena of visit out in the open.”

  “Meantime, let’s practice the role of the human. Now on this matter of gravity, for example…”

  “Yes, an artifact must sag when we sit on it. The carpet must show footprints when we walk on it.”

  “That’s a little too much. I heard the walls creak and the whole building tremble.”

  “We’re going to have to give over searching for the intelligent ones, at present, and concentrate on simulating the human life, instead of the intelligent one.”

  “For the present, then, we’ll accept the most popular art form representation of humans as our model. I think we need to get out and around a bit more, get a little better idea of what is acceptable to humans. If the intelligent species is masquerading as human, he may not reveal himself to us unless we do the same. Perhaps he is concealing himself from the human, as well as from us. Perhaps he will reveal himself only when we are suitably disguised so he may reveal himself to us without, at the same time, revealing himself to the humans.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, and the Five merged into one invisible vortex of radiant energy. They soared through the interstices of molecules in the outer wall.

  The Night Manager, backed by the House Detective and the Dubious Bellhop, knocked discreetly on the door of 842. There was no answer. He knocked again, although his developed hotel sense already told him the room was empty, that there was no guest or intruder asleep, passed out, or refusing to answer.

  He unlocked the door and threw it wide.

  Across the room, in the far wall, he was horrified to see a three-foot spiral of radiation-scorched paint. He saw a line of footprints, the carpet nap ground to a powder. He saw a deep sag, reaching almost to the floor, on this side of the bed.

  These guests had been even more destructive of property than normal—and they hadn’t registered, or paid, or paid their bar bill. And how was that going to look on his report to management?

  It was well for us that the House Detective was an avid fan of science fiction, and thought this phenomenon was sufficiently outre to bring to the attention of Space Navy, Bureau of Extraterrestrial Psychology.

  It was too bad that Pentagon red tape prevented the communication from reaching our department until it was too late.

  Although, I still don’t see what I might have done about it.

  SEVEN

  Dr. Kibbie proved right. Time, time was indeed precious.

  I had a scant month to get my program of becoming an important man into motion. Because Central Personnel was on a kick of accumulating evidence to
show how much they were contributing to economy-in-government, they kept cutting my requisitions for more employees in half—and tallying up the savings to prove how efficient they were.

  I endeared myself to them by doubling, tripling, quadrupling my demands, and the mushrooming numbers of people they refused to let me have would make this a banner year for them.

  As it turned out, I was able to hire only two thousand five hundred and sixty-nine people and seven hundred and seventy-two Ph.D.s, in that month. My separation of the two species of employees is conscious. The Ph.D. seems determined to separate himself from the human race; and the human race, in equal disdain, is more than agreeable. Why should I antagonize anybody through attempting to join them together again?

  Once or twice Shirley did murmur some objections. It seemed that the weekly necessity of finding larger and larger quarters to house our staff kept confusing her on whom she was permitted to administrate, and who was a mere moving man.

  Further, since there was more paper work involved in hiring or transferring an employee than any other employee could handle, the department had become so overburdened with handling the process that it would surely capsize and sink. I gave her the usual governmental solution to that problem: If there was too much work involved for the people in her department, then we must simply hire more people. Also, hadn’t we better set up a special committee to investigate the amount of work involved?

  She shuddered and pointed out that she was working night and day to administrate all this, as it was, without taking on an investigating committee. I pointed out, quite logically, that the superior executive must learn to delegate authority and responsibility—and hadn’t we better concentrate on hiring her a cabinet of specialists to aid her?

  But her heart was not really in her objections, for she was able to walk the streets again without dodging former friends who played the numbers game of importance in Washington in the same way the Hollywood climber drops names.

  Sara had given me no problem. When she heard I wasn’t coming back to Computer Research, she took it for granted I wouldn’t be able to run the government without her help. When I telephoned her, diffidently, to suggest she weigh her loyalty to Computer Research against the interest and advantage of joining me here at the Pentagon (and expecting some demurring and hesitancy from her) she responded by rather crisply letting me know she had been packed for three days, waiting, and apparently I really did need a secretary or it wouldn’t have taken me so long to get around to that detail.