Crompton Divided

by Robert Sheckley

  ‘Yes, I can, when I put my mind to it.’

  ‘That is an invasion of my privacy,’ Crompton declared.

  ‘What makes you think so? When you broadcast words, you expect anyone around to hear. Why not when you broadcast thoughts?’

  ‘I want to select the thoughts I broadcast,’ Crompton said.

  ‘Do you? What a curious attitude. One thought is very much like another, you know. They’re just a sort of vibration and there’s nothing personal about them. Creatures have been broadcasting words and thoughts at each other for a long time now, and no one is much better or worse for it.’

  ‘Aren’t you sort of young to be spouting all of this deep stuff?’ Crompton asked.

  ‘I am not quite a million years old,’ the person replied. ‘On a galactic scale, that’s pretty young. Still, I’ve seen a thing or two in my time.’

  ‘I don’t find that a very amusing joke,’ Crompton said.

  ‘I am an Aaian,’ the young man said. ‘I always tell the truth, even when I lie. And all Aaian jokes are in bad taste because we’re too old to bother being subtle. I see that some proof is called for.’

  ‘I should think so,’ Crompton said.

  ‘Then dig this.’ The fresh-faced youth reached up and touched his nose. Immediately his face changed to the deeply furrowed mask of an old man. His clothing changed to a tattered gray bathrobe, and his voice rose to a squeaky soprano as he said, ‘One good metamorphosis is worth a million words.’

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ Crompton said, shaken.

  The old man changed back into the fresh-faced youth. ‘Want to see some more demonstrations of my superhuman abilities?’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Crompton said, ‘I believe you. Just give me a little time to adjust.’

  ‘Well, really, Crompton,’ the Aaian said, ‘if you want to survive out here you’re going to have to get on the ball. Some peculiar things happen out beyond Earth, and there’s no time for standing around being astonished. Your attitude must be, Nu, so strange things happen, so what else is new? Otherwise you’re going to malrespond when something really tricky comes along.’

  Crompton took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He said, ‘All right, so you’re an Aaian and you’re a million years old and you have superhuman powers. So what else is new?’

  That’s much better. What’s new? Well, here you are on a starship and your seatmate turns out to be a member of the race to whose planet you are going. Obviously I know a lot about you. Obviously I’ve got plans of some sort for you. Obviously you and I are going to have to come to terms with each other.’

  Crompton nodded. ‘Obviously. And what else is new?’

  ‘Don’t be a wise guy,’ the Aaian said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know what this is all about?’

  ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me.’

  ‘Crompton, we Aaians are the oldest intelligent race in the galaxy. We’re also the smartest. We are immortal, more or less. We’ve seen it all come down the pike. Long ago we conquered this island universe, but we found it wasn’t much good for laughs so we gave it back. There’s nothing left for us to do, nothing meaningful in our terms. So we do nothing but play our Game.’

  ‘I’ve heard about the Aaian Game,’ Crompton said. ‘But nobody seems to know much about it.’

  ‘That’s not because we’re secretive,’ the Aaian said. ‘It’s simply that our Game cannot be subsumed under a static description. It can’t really be described at all because it is changing constantly, according to rules that we make up as we go along.’

  ‘Is that really all you can find to do?’ Crompton asked.

  The Aaian shrugged. ‘Ancient and accomplished races have their peculiar problems, Crompton. I mean, after perfect enlightenment, what do you do? You can’t expect us to just stand around grinning at each other. So we play our Game. Our idea of a good laugh is to go one up on each other. We are, of course, always aware that each of us is all of us and scoring off another is just the same as scoring off oneself. That’s fine with us, because a game should not have a serious outcome. But it should be played hard and fair, and that’s what we do according to the rules of the moment.’

  ‘That’s all very interesting,’ Crompton said. ‘But why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because you happen to be in my Game, Crompton. Or you will be as soon as this aspect of the Game begins. You are going to be one of the pawns I will manipulate. Doesn’t that sound like fun?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Crompton said. ‘Count me out.’

  ‘Calm down,’ the Aaian said. ‘I am also one of the pawns you are going to manipulate in your Game.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind these days,’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t have any time for this stuff.’

  ‘Recovering your missing personality components and achieving Reintegration are vitally important to you, are they not? They constitute your Game. To succeed, you are going to need my help. Without it, you might as well stay on Earth and do crossword puzzles.’

  ‘Specifically,’ Crompton said, ‘what do I need your help for?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ the Aaian said. ‘How can I know anything like that until the Game actually begins?’

  ‘If you can’t know that,’ Crompton said, ‘how can you know the circumstances will even arise in which I will need your help?’

  ‘Because I can know that much,’ the Aaian said. ‘After all, I am a being with superhuman powers.’

  Crompton thought about it, and the more he thought the less he liked what was happening.

  ‘This is all going too fast,’ he said. ‘It’s not the way I thought things would be.’

  ‘Of course not,’ the Aaian said. ‘Like most people you want what you want, and only when and how and for as long as you want it. I’m sorry the universe isn’t being run according to your requirements, Crompton. But there it is! You can sulk and play hard to get and try to have things your own way and probably get killed before you get to do anything interesting; or you can get with it and maybe we’ll both have some fun.’

  ‘All right!’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter! What happens next?’

  ‘Next I tell you my name. It is Secuille. Remember it. We will meet again, later, for the first time, and then we can get right down to business.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Crompton said.

  ‘This time doesn’t count,’ Secuille said. ‘It’s completely out of temporal sequence. It’s as good as didn’t happen.’

  ‘Are you telling me that we haven’t actually met just now?’

  ‘That’s right. Interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s a bore to let things go along until they actually happen, and these spaceflights are mostly dead time anyhow.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ Crompton said, ‘how we can meet later for the first time when we’ve met now for the first time.’

  ‘But I explained to you,’ Secuille said, ‘this meeting doesn’t count. I do have to pay a penalty for doing it this way, however: I won’t remember any of this when we actually do meet.’

  ‘That makes no sense at all.’

  ‘Rules never do, do they?’ Secuille said. ‘But there it is. I won’t remember you, but you will remember me, and you’ll tell me what happened, and I’ll catch on quick due to my superlative powers of adaptability, and the Game will begin.’

  ‘You may be superhuman,’ Crompton said, ‘but I think you’re also crazy.’

  ‘Well, it looks like it’s going to be interesting,’ Secuille said. ‘Now I seem to have used up all my lecture material, so I must be off.’ He smiled at Crompton and vanished.

  Crompton sat very still for a while. Then he signaled the hostess.

  ‘Excuse me, miss, could you tell me the name of the young man who was sitting here?’

  She said, ‘You must be joking, sir. That seat has been vacant throughout the flight.’

  ‘I was afraid of that,’ Crompton said.

 
; ‘Would you like another orange juice?’

  ‘I think I’d better,’ Crompton said heavily.

  8

  Traveler, we welcome you to the planet Aaia, and to its capital city, Cetesphe, and to the Hotel Grandspruinge located in the interesting and historic downtown Nevratidae district, and framed in the distance by the stately Oleonian Alps. We have assembled here a few facts for your greater appreciation and enjoyment of our unique civilization.

  Aaia, as you perhaps know from The Guinness Book of Universal Records, is the oldest planet in the galaxy to be inhabited by a single autochthonous race throughout its history. This rare continuity, plus the fact that Aaia has had no war of any sort for the past 990,000 years, gives this planet an atmosphere of security and down-home coziness not to be equaled elsewhere.

  The Aains are a small civilization, limiting themselves to exactly one billion members. They are considered immortal by some, but themselves claim no more than extreme longevity. The oldest living Aaian, Truch Nivera, is at least thirteen million years old according to carbon-dating techniques carried out on his toenail parings by the unimpeachable Swiss Bureau of Corroborations. (Mr. Nivera can be seen Friday nights at the Kot Krot Club in West Cetesphe, where he has been giving poetry readings for the last seven hundred years.)

  Many people have asked what the Aaians, who have lived so long and experienced so much, do for amusement. This is not an easy question to answer, since Aaians are individualists par excellence. Aaians do many different things and learn many curious and useful facts. This is only to be expected of a race that dispensed with fixed personal form two million years ago; a race that consciously chooses its bodies, emotions, values, concepts, etc. In this way Aaians get to live countless lives.

  Aaians have no fixed ‘self? to refer to. Aaians are only who they happen to have chosen to be for a period of time. When the moment comes to be someone or something else, they shed their former bodies, feelings, values, etc., and take on those appropriate to their new roles and existences. From this it may be imagined that the Aaians are basically a lighthearted race, though races who do not know their ways tend to consider them unreliable in business dealings. (But there is a simple way around this. Before doing any business with an Aaian, ask him for the date of expiration on his current psychosomatic setup. He is bound to honor his commitments during this term by the oldest ethical rule of the race: Say what you do and do what you say, in the words of Amirra Tauba, founder of the Aaian Uniform Code of Ethics for Consciously Sentient Beings.)

  But getting back to the question of amusements: aside from the multifarious complications which they encounter in their consecutive existences, Aaians are brought together by their devotion to the Game. It is outside the range of this brochure to attempt to characterize the Game. Standard works on the subject are Wolfschmidt’s Players of the Galactic Noh Play and Charleroi’s Strategy of Incongruity.

  There are many immediate pleasures for the tourist to sample. Of special note is the Gardens of Rui in East Cetesphe. This vast amusement complex, on its own estate of ten million acres of dramatic countryside, borders on the violet waters (made so by the marine organism grunius) of the Pyrametique Sea, and commemorates the famous space battle of Inferdung Pass in which the armed forces of Aaia broke the power of the mad Asthark Lethume and his hordes of wild Mitsumian tribesmen. The Gardens are laid out to provide maximum pleasure for each of the space-traveling Nineteen Civilized Species. There is much here for everyone, and at modest cost. For the adventurous, there are pleasures compounded of the most guilty and deeply hidden desires – to be brought to light and staged for you by a plentiful staff of your own species to ensure the authenticity of all delights – unlike the Gouville FunLand on Drog’hvasta II, where all services, sexual and otherwise, are performed by shape-changing (and sometimes absentminded!) Duverian Hungorfyyords.

  But the description is not the described, as Amirra Tauba remarked as he chewed up the map of the galaxy! Words, in the final analysis, are just about as futile as actions, and much less fun. So welcome to Aaia, where we promise you the time of your incarnation!

  Crompton put the brochure in his pocket. He was sitting in the lobby of the Pingala Arms in downtown Cetesphe. His ship had ‘come out of the tube’ (as Captain Remonstrator jocularly expressed it) some twelve hours previously. He was now seated in the lobby of his hotel awaiting the arrival of a man who might be able to help him.

  Edgar Loomis, whom he sought, was the pleasure component of the scattered Crompton personality. He was the fun-seeker, the sensation-lover; without him, there was no party for Crompton, no immediacy, no Now. Loomis was indispensable. But it looked as though there were going to be considerable difficulties in finding him.

  Soon after his arrival, Crompton had gone to the Hall of Records, where information on the whereabouts of all beings on Aaia was scrupulously maintained and updated. He was told that Edgar Loomis was in good health and was currently employed at the Gardens of Rui. But no other information was given to him: by virtue of a very recent law, the addresses of persons and other beings working in the Gardens were no longer to be disclosed. The android clerk, though sympathetic and in agreement that the law made no apparent sense, could do nothing for him except suggest that he conduct a personal search of the Gardens.

  Crompton decided against this. It would be futile, considering their vast extent and the hordes of people employed there, some of them indoors in capacities that would make a chance encounter with a male of their own race unlikely in the extreme.

  He discussed his problem with the desk clerk at the Pingala Arms. The clerk hinted that something might be done, under certain circumstances difficult to define. Crompton, after several agonizing seconds, figured out what the man meant and, crimson with embarrassment, offered him a crumpled handful of Aaian pronics. The clerk accepted them matter-of-factly and made a telegnomic call. He told Crompton to wait in the lobby until someone came for him.

  The hotel’s central intake orifice dilated and a small hunchbacked person in a long tattered gray overcoat and cracked brown shoes slid through and said, ‘You Crompton? Follow me.’

  He led Crompton outside, to a waiting limousine. (Crompton learned later that this vehicle ran on the power supplied by a small psychophysical converter that extracted volition from chimpanzees bred especially for this purpose, then converted that energy into torque.) The hunchback seated himself next to Crompton and waited until Crompton paid him six hundred pronics. Then he gave instructions to the driver and the vehicle gibbered away.

  The hunchback said, ‘I’m not guaranteeing anything, but I’m taking you to see the only person who can help you, if he wants to.’

  ‘Who is this person?’ Crompton asked.

  ‘He is the newly elected Council Member for East Cetesphe. He is also the person who sponsored the law that prevents you from learning what you need to know.’

  ‘How can he help me?’

  ‘It is a custom of Aaia that the man responsible for a new law is also granted a legal exception to that law, to use as he pleases, or to bestow on someone else.’

  ‘You’re saying that the man who passes a new law is legally entitled to break it?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But that’s immoral! It’s blatant corruption!’

  ‘On the contrary, the law prevents corruption by legitimatizing it.’

  ‘That makes no sense to me at all,’ Crompton said. ‘And anyhow, why would this Council Member want to help me?’

  ‘For the same reason that the desk clerk and I are helping you,’ the hunchback said. ‘For a bribe.’

  ‘I see,’ Crompton said coldly.

  ‘We’re very much into bribery this century,’ the hunchback explained. ‘It’s become quite a fad.’

  Crompton sat in a scornful silence.

  ‘I suppose you were expecting more godlike behavior?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Most tourists do. But we Aains got sick of the god-like thing
many thousands of years ago. It wasn’t much fun, and it interfered with the Game.’

  ‘I see,’ Crompton said.

  They rode in silence for a while. Then the hunchback said, ‘I see that you’re wondering how come I, an Aaian with the power to take on any shape I desire, am currently walking around with a hunchback and tatty clothes.’

  ‘I really don’t like you reading my mind,’ Crompton snapped.

  ‘Sorry,’ the Aaian said.

  After a while Crompton asked, ‘Well, since you brought it up, why?’

  ‘It’s because of a bad move I made in the Game a few centuries ago. I’ve got to wear this body exactly as it is for another eighty years. The hunch isn’t so bad – I can store water in it, you know – but I’ve got dyspepsia so bad it would drive you crazy.’

  ‘Huh,’ Crompton said.

  ‘You’re really not a very interesting conversationalist,’ the hunchback told him. ‘Anyhow, here we are.’ The car came to a stop in front of a small green office building. ‘Go right down the central corridor and enter the first door on your right. Good luck.’

  Crompton got out. The car gibbered away, and Crompton entered the office building. He found the door that the hunchback had indicated. He knocked.

  ‘Come in,’ a voice said.

  Crompton opened the door and walked into a richly furnished office. At a desk, turning toward him now, was an Aaian with a familiar face and an unmistakable crew cut. It was Secuille.

  9

  Secuille looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. ‘Yes, what can I do for you?’ he asked in a pleasant, slightly harassed voice.

  ‘I’m Alistair Crompton. Don’t you remember me?’

  Secuille studied his face, then shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. Perhaps you’ve mixed me up with someone else.’

  ‘Your name is Secuille,’ Crompton said. ‘We just met on a starship. We talked for about an hour, then you disappeared.’