And Now the News

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “It is good, isn’t it?” said Yem Foong. “Especially with the salt fish.”

  Brunhilde took a little of each. “My! The fish is really briny.” She sipped her water, sipped again. “Jeff, you don’t know what you are missing.”

  “I do,” said Cotrell. “But I’m quite happy with this, thank you.”

  Brunhilde munched daintily and sipped. “May I have more water, please? Thank you. To get back to Stanley—what do you think? You did ask my help, you know.”

  Yem Foong said, “Stanley was with me in Kingston that night. Of all the servants, he, least of all, could have done it.”

  There was a tense silence. Brunhilde Moot ate more ackey. “Where’s the evidence to that?” she demanded.

  “Yem Foong’s word,” said Cotrell. “It’s good.”

  “Well, then, the whole thing’s perfectly simple.” She spoke as if to children. “Mr. Yem can testify that Stanley was here, you can bring up something of his background, and get a conviction.”

  Cotrell slowly put his fork down. “You really do mean that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” She looked at him over her glass.

  “Because this boy is a little unusual, and because he has no education, and because he’s black, you feel I should run him in, throw him to the Assizes, and have him hung whether he’s guilty or not?”

  Brunhilde shrugged. “You told me yourself that the island is overpopulated.”

  “That tears it,” gritted Cotrell. “That jolly well pays the bloody piper. Miss Moot, you’re a rotter. I had an idea before that you were a filthy swine, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it—not really, not even with proof after proof—What are you laughing at?”

  Brunhilde Moot carefully nibbled, chewed, swallowed, and laughed again at the fuming C.I.D. man. “You,” she said imperturbably. “Ever since I first saw you at the Myrtle Bank two months ago, you have worn that restrained British mask of yours. I wondered then what would ever break it up and make it human, and now I’ve done it.”

  Purpling, Jeff Cotrell half rose. Yem Foong checked him with a gesture. “No, Inspector. Now we need only wait.”

  Cotrell looked at him, slumped back.

  “Are you all right?” the old man asked Brunhilde solicitously.

  “All right? But of course.”

  “You were not eating,” said Yem Foong, “and I thought—”

  With an obvious effort, she addressed herself to the salt fish and ackey again. A delicate line of droplets appeared on her upper lip. She dabbed at them with her napkin, paling. Suddenly she put down her fork, looked at her plate, and at the two intent men.

  Jeff Cotrell nodded, his eyes tight on her face. “Just the right food for your kind,” he said, “out of season and all.”

  “My kind—”

  “Rats,” said Cotrell. “Mad dogs.”

  “It—isn’t poison! Yem has—”

  Yem Foong dropped his eyes to his plate. “I haven’t touched mine.”

  Brunhilde Moot’s face turned a pasty gray. “I—feel—” Suddenly she was on her feet, her lips twitching. The transformation was more shocking, much more, than had been Cotrell’s outburst. She flung herself across the table, clawed hands outstretched, and closed them on Yem’s embroidered jacket.

  “Eat it, damn you,” she screamed. “Eat it!”

  Cotrell leaned across and very carefully brought the edge of his palm down on the side of her neck, hard. The expression on her face did not change, but her hands relaxed. She slid limply back, slowly began to sag on to the table. Cotrell rolled her unceremoniously to the floor. She moved, clawed at the dirt floor, and got to her knees, her head hanging.

  “You feel sick,” gritted Cotrell. “Don’t let it worry you, old girl. It’ll get worse. The right way for you to go out, too. You’re not human. You’re not a member of anything human. The colossal gall of you, to go about like a—” his voice thickened—“like a woman, like a beautiful warm human woman.”

  He pulled himself up with an effort. Yem looked at him with deep, understanding eyes. “You murdered Yem Ching because you were bored, because you wanted to watch me try to break the case, talk about it with me over a drink!”

  There was a horrid, wrenching, human explosion. Cotrell turned his head away. “That’s only the first spasm,” he said coldly. “You’ll do that until you choke to death.”

  The seizure subsided. She squatted back and turned miserable eyes up to Cotrell. “Doctor,” she murmured. “Stomach pump—”

  “I wouldn’t get a doctor for you if there was a medical convention out there under the tamarind tree!” said Cotrell.

  “Get … doctor,” she whimpered. “I—stomach—” and she moaned. It was a weak, piteous, broken sound. “I killed him,” she whispered. “Got—souvenirs.” Again there was the frightening, tearing spasm. “Doctor—”

  “Souvenirs? The little casket and the jade?”

  She nodded.

  “Where are they?”

  She shuddered violently, and turned up a glance of unqualified hatred. “Get doctor.”

  “All right. You tell me where the souvenirs are, and I’ll see to it that you don’t die from ackeys.”

  She made a listless gesture. Following it, Cotrell dumped the contents of her handbag onto the table. In the glittering clutter of gem-encrusted compact, cigarette case, and matching perfume atomizer, was a tiny carven jade figurine. Cotrell held it out to Yem, who took it and nodded.

  “Where’s the box?”

  “Stocking-casket. Hotel room.”

  Cotrell took out his notebook, hurriedly scribbled in it. “Diary. Tells how,” she added. “Quickly—get me a doctor!”

  Cotrell ripped out the leaf. “Have Stanley run this to the telegraph office. Quickly,” he said to Yem.

  Yem took it wordlessly and went out.

  “You—” said Cotrell to the huddled thing on the floor, and the syllable was all scorn, all revulsion. “You couldn’t be frightened—not when you could be a woman. But you can’t smile and raise your ruddy eyebrow when you’re behaving like a poisoned mongrel, eh? By heaven, I had to play you like a fish to get you out here and get that confession—and the ‘souvenirs.’ That’s all we needed. We have two witnesses who saw you near here that night, and half a hundred who saw you driving down the Spanish Town Road on the wrong side.

  “We couldn’t pin you down to the shop, but now we have the jade and the casket. You didn’t think we’d suspect a woman of a bludgeoning, did you?” He broke off to let another horrible retching spell pass. When it was over, he said, “Oh, yes. That. The salt fish made you thirsty. Made you drink water. Water that was loaded with a nice tasteless essence of nux vomica. There’s nothing wrong with the ackey.”

  Brunhilde Moot began to cry. Cotrell put the manacles on her. She did not resist. She cried as if she did not quite know how to do it. It was probably the first time in years that she had cried.

  “Why?” she said. “Why this sneaky, rotten way to trap me?”

  Jeff Cotrell turned his back. His voice came thickly, “It was the only way. If you could have stood up, faced it, fought it, then I—I -shouldn’t have been able—”

  The sound behind him, suddenly, was not a sob, but the shadow of a laugh. “A conquest!” she said. “I suppose I shall get to the hanging after all; and there you’ll be too. A mad infatuation can very easily destroy a man—and his pride.”

  Jeff Cotrell turned away, his face ashen. “Not this man,” he said. “No. No, I’m quite sure you’re wrong.”

  The Skills of Xanadu

  AND THE SUN WENT NOVA and humanity fragmented and fled; and such is the self-knowledge of humankind that it knew it must guard its past as it guarded its being, or it would cease to be human; and such was its pride in itself that it made of its traditions a ritual and a standard.

  The great dream was that wherever humanity settled, fragment by fragment by fragment, however it lived, it would continue rather than begin again, so that all t
hrough the Universe and the years, humans would be humans, speaking as humans, thinking as humans, aspiring and progressing as humans; and whenever human met human, no matter how different, how distant, he would come in peace, meet his own kind, speak his own tongue.

  Humans, however, being humans—

  Bril emerged near the pink star, disliking its light, and found the fourth planet. It hung waiting for him like an exotic fruit. (And was it ripe, and could he ripen it? And what if it were poison?) He left his machine in orbit and descended in a bubble. A young savage watched him come and waited by a waterfall.

  “Earth was my mother,” said Bril from the bubble. It was the formal greeting of all humankind, spoken in the Old Tongue.

  “And my father,” said the savage, in an atrocious accent.

  Watchfully, Bril emerged from the bubble, but stood very close by it. He completed his part of the ritual. “I respect the disparity of our wants, as individuals, and greet you.”

  “I respect the identity of our needs, as humans, and greet you. I am Wonyne,” said the youth, “son of Tanyne, of the Senate, and Nina. This place is Xanadu, the fourth planet.”

  “I am Bril of Kit Carson, second planet of the Sumner System, and a member of the Sole Authority,” said the newcomer, adding, “and I come in peace.”

  He waited then, to see if the savage would discard any weapons he might have, according to historic protocol. Wonyne did not; he apparently had none. He wore only a cobwebby tunic and a broad belt made of flat, black, brilliantly polished stones and could hardly have concealed so much as a dart. Bril waited yet another moment, watching the untroubled face of the savage, to see if Wonyne suspected anything of the arsenal hidden in the sleek black uniform, the gleaming jackboots, the metal gauntlets.

  Wonyne said only, “Then, in peace, welcome.” He smiled. “Come with me to Tanyne’s house and mine, and be refreshed.”

  “You say Tanyne, your father, is a Senator? Is he active now? Could he help me to reach your center of government?”

  The youth paused, his lips moving slightly, as if he were translating the dead language into another tongue. Then, “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  Bril flicked his left gauntlet with his right fingertips and the bubble sprang away and up, where at length it would join the ship until it was needed. Wonyne was not amazed—probably, thought Bril, because it was beyond his understanding.

  Bril followed the youth up a winding path past a wonderland of flowering plants, most of them purple, some white, a few scarlet, and all jeweled by the waterfall. The higher reaches of the path were flanked by thick soft grass, red as they approached, pale pink as they passed.

  Bril’s narrow black eyes flicked everywhere, saw and recorded everything: the easy-breathing boy springing up the slope ahead, and the constant shifts of color in his gossamer garment as the wind touched it; the high trees, some of which might conceal a man or a weapon; the rock outcroppings and what oxides they told of; the birds he could see and the bird-songs he heard which might be something else.

  He was a man who missed only the obvious, and there is so little that is obvious.

  Yet he was not prepared for the house; he and the boy were halfway across the park-like land which surrounded it before he recognized it as such.

  It seemed to have no margins. It was here high and there only a place between flower beds; yonder a room became a terrace, and elsewhere a lawn was a carpet because there was a roof over it. The house was divided into areas rather than rooms, by open grilles and by arrangements of color. Nowhere was there a wall. There was nothing to hide behind and nothing that could be locked. All the land, all the sky, looked into and through the house, and the house was one great window on the world.

  Seeing it, Bril felt a slight shift in his opinion of the natives. His feeling was still one of contempt, but now he added suspicion. A cardinal dictum on humans as he knew them was: Every man has something to hide. Seeing a mode of living like this did not make him change his dictum: he simply increased he watchfulness, asking: How do they hide it?

  “Tan! Tan!” the boy was shouting. “I’ve brought a friend!”

  A man and a woman strolled toward them from a garden. The man was huge, but otherwise so like the youth Wonyne that there could be no question of their relationship. Both had long, narrow, clear gray eyes set very wide apart, and red—almost orange—hair. The noses were strong and delicate at the same time, their mouths thin-lipped but wide and good-natured.

  But the woman—

  It was a long time before Bril could let himself look, let himself believe that there was such a woman. After his first glance, he made of her only a presence and fed himself small nibbles of belief in his eyes, in the fact that there could be hair like that, face, voice, body. She was dressed, like her husband and the boy, in the smoky kaleidoscope which resolved itself, when the wind permitted, into a black-belted tunic.

  “He is Bril of Kit Carson in the Sumner System,” babbled the boy, “and he’s a member of the Sole Authority and it’s the second planet and he knew the greeting and got it right. So did I,” he added, laughing. “This is Tanyne, of the Senate, and my mother Nina.”

  “You are welcome, Bril of Kit Carson,” she said to him; and unbelieving in this way that had come upon him, he took away his gaze and inclined his head.

  “You must come in,” said Tanyne cordially, and led the way through an arbor which was not the separate arch it appeared to be, but an entrance.

  The room was wide, wider at one end than the other, though it was hard to determine by how much. The floor was uneven, graded upward toward one corner, where it was a mossy bank. Scattered here and there were what the eye said were white and striated gray boulders; the hand would say they were flesh. Except for a few shelf and table-like niches on these and in the bank, they were the only furniture.

  Water ran frothing and gurgling through the room; apparently as an open brook; but Bril saw Nina’s bare foot tread on the invisible covering that followed it down to the pool at the other end. The pool was the one he had seen from outside, indeterminately in and out of the house. A large tree grew by the pool and leaned its heavy branches toward the bank; evidently its wide-flung limbs were webbed and tented between by the same invisible substance which covered the brook. These branches formed the only overhead cover; yet, to the ear, it felt like a ceiling.

  The whole effect was, to Bril, intensely depressing, and he surprised himself with a flash of homesickness for the tall steel cities of his home planet.

  Nina smiled and left them. Bril followed his host’s example and sank down on the ground, or floor, where it became a bank, or wall. Inwardly, Bril rebelled at the lack of decisiveness, of discipline, of clear-cut limitation inherent in such haphazard design as this. But he was well-trained and quite prepared, at first, to keep his feelings to himself among barbarians.

  “Nina will join us in a moment,” said Tanyne.

  Bril, who had been watching the woman’s swift movements across the courtyard through the transparent wall opposite, controlled a start. “I am unused to your ways, and wondered what she was doing,” he said.

  “She is preparing a meal for you,” explained Tanyne.

  “Herself?”

  Tanyne and his son gazed wonderingly. “Does that seem unusual to you?”

  “I understood the lady was wife to a Senator,” said Bril. It seemed adequate as an explanation, but only to him. He looked from the boy’s face to the man’s. “Perhaps I understand something different when I use the term ‘Senator.’ ”

  “Perhaps you do. Would you tell us what a Senator is on the planet Kit Carson?”

  “He is a member of the Senate, subservient to the Sole Authority, and in turn leader of a free Nation.”

  “And his wife?”

  “His wife shares his privileges. She might serve a member of the Sole Authority, but hardly anyone else—certainly not an unidentified stranger.”

  “Interesting,” said Tanyne, while the boy murmured
the astonishment he had not expressed at Bril’s bubble, or Bril himself. “Tell me, have you not identified yourself, then?”

  “He did, by the waterfall,” the youth insisted.

  “I gave you no proof,” said Bril stiffly. He watched father and son exchange a glance. “Credentials, written authority.” He touched the flat pouch hung on his power belt.

  Wonyne asked ingenuously, “Do the credentials say you are not Bril of Kit Carson in the Sumner System?”

  Bril frowned at him, and Tanyne said gently, “Wonyne, take care.” To Bril, he said, “Surely there are many differences between us, as there always are between different worlds. But I am certain of this one similarity: the young at times run straight where wisdom has built a winding path.”

  Bril sat silently and thought this out. It was probably some sort of apology, he decided, and gave a single sharp nod. Youth, he thought, was an attenuated defect here. A boy Wonyne’s age would be a soldier on Carson, ready for a soldier’s work, and no one would be apologizing for him. Nor would he be making blunders. None!

  He said, “These credentials are for your officials when I meet with them. By the way, when can that be?”

  Tanyne shrugged his wide shoulders. “Whenever you like.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Very well.”

  “Is it far?”

  Tanyne seemed perplexed. “Is what far?”

  “Your capital, or wherever it is your Senate meets.”

  “Oh, I see. It doesn’t meet, in the sense you mean. It is always in session, though, as they used to say. We—”

  He compressed his lips and made a liquid, bisyllabic sound. Then he laughed. “I do beg your pardon,” he said warmly. “The Old Tongue lacks certain words, certain concepts. What is your word for—er—the-presence-of-all-in-the-presence-of-one?”

  “I think,” said Bril carefully, “that we had better go back to the subject at hand. Are you saying that your Senate does not meet in some official place, at some appointed time?”