Utility

by Raymond F. Jones

  If we failed to continue the contacts on Merans, we’d be blacklisted with every trading company in the business.

  The peculiar, gadgety psychology of the Diomedes and Arthoids combined with the natural cantankerous nature of the creatures made Merans probably the most difficult trading area in existence.

  No one ever has and probably never will understand what makes the little devils want to fight with every other type of life on their planet. Maybe it’s just their gadgety nature that makes them turn every device that’s traded to them into a weapon, but certainly they have a one-track idea of utility.

  All we knew was that we were there to trade for Jewelworlds and it was against the law to trade weapons or interfere in local warfare.

  Merans is about as desolate a world as has been encountered with life on it. Plant forms are practically nonexistent. The surface of the planet is rugged, but no mountains worthy of the name are there. There are low hills and cliffs big enough to contain caves in which the inhabitants live. And there are pools of water large enough for them to swim in, which is what they do about half the time.

  The air is cold and light, but it is possible to go without spacesuits which makes trading a lot easier because all communication is by sign language. The creatures of Merans appeared to be totally voiceless and if they communicated with each other nothing was known of their methods.

  Captain Wilkins set the Cassiopeia down on a barren plain between two mesas and beside a pool of water where the Diomedes were likely to be swimming.

  The final jar as she settled on the stern plates was a welcome sound to us all. After three months in concentrated lilac soup we were all partially intoxicated or asphyxiated .by it.

  Dunc Edwards was the first out. He leaped like a kid and beat his hands on his chest. “Air! Pure, fresh air!” he exclaimed.

  It was an act for McCord’s benefit, but the latter wasn’t even looking. He left the hatch slowly with a purposeful look on his face and marched straight across the plain towards the pool. Captain Wilkins nodded with a tense, satisfied look on his face. “Better break out the pens, boys. McCord’s on his way to open negotiations.”

  With full knowledge of the crucial nature of the moment, we began hauling out the cases' of writing pens to swap for Jewelworlds. The next few hours would tell us if this would be our last trip to Merans.

  We had about a couple of dozen cases unloaded when Captain Wilkins pushed back his cap and shaded his eyes with his hands. “What in the name of seven constellations is that fool up to, now?”

  We all looked in the direction of McCord. He was standing on the edge of the pool wigwagging frantically with his hands. It was the unique sign language he had established with the Diomedes who were frolicking in the pool.

  In a moment a couple of hundred of them came tunmbling up out of the water and scrambled to the bank. They sat in orderly rows as if understanding some directions McCord was giving them.

  They looked like nothing more than a flock of wet teddy bears. They had long, prehensile fingers and toes that they used to fashion the Jewelworlds—and make lethal gadgets out of eggbeaters.

  Then something shocked our attention and froze us rigid where we stood.

  McCord was slowly peeling off his shirt. He stood a moment in the cold and we could imagine him shivering even beneath the slabs of alcoholic fat that upholstered him.

  Then he divested himself of the rest of his clothes and poised a moment on the bank. His body formed an arc and he deliberately plunged into the pool.

  “McCord's taking a bath!” Somebody gasped. Maybe it was all of us. We dropped the cases of pens that were in our hands and ran for the pool until the light air made our lungs burn. But we didn’t stop.

  Maybe McCord was committing suicide, was the thought that most of us had, I think. And without McCord we wouldn’t get half the Jewelworlds we expected for our cargo of pens.

  The gathering of Diomedes gave us a dirty look as we came running up as if we had no right to burst in upon their god, Hydrophobia McCord, like that.

  But when we topped the rise we saw what none of us expected to see. McCord was lazily floating on his back, half submerged. He spewed a column of water, whale-like, into the air and waved.

  “Hi, fellows. I knew I could do it. My psychosis is all gone now, see? I can take a bath any time I want to! My hydrophobia won’t bother you no more.”

  There was no trading that day or the next, because as soon as we got McCord to come out of the pool and get dressed he took one backward look and collapsed cold.

  I helped catch him or, rather, to break his fall. It was like a ton of beef coming down on me and it took four of us quite a little while to carry him back to the ship and get him in his bunk.

  When that was done we brought- the cases of pens back inside.

  We didn’t carry a ship’s doctor because we were too small a tub for that, but I’d done a lot of first aid and was unanimously elected to take charge of the bellyaches and the drunks.

  What I didn’t know about medicine would supply a dozen specialists with a lifetime of knowledge, but McCord’s condition seemed like a severe case of shock to me. After examining him, I called Captain Wilkins.

  “There’s something intensely not on the beam,” I said. “There's something inside McCord that none of us have dreamed, I think.”

  “That stuff he drinks will preserve it for science until he dies, anyway,” said Captain Wilkins. “What I want to know is when can he get out and trade again?”

  “You don’t get what I mean, Cap. In his head, I mean.”

  “Is there anything there?”

  “Plenty, I think. Just before you came in he was out of his head and he yelled Thorgersen’s name a half dozen times and then he said, ‘It’s boiling me, Thorgersen, it’s boiling me.’ After a while he started mumbling threats and then said, ‘I did it, fellows. For eight years I’ve been trying to get up courage to take a bath and I’ve done it. He can’t hurt me no more, and I’ll get my eight years back, too.”

  Captain Wilkins scowled. “Sounds like he’s sore at Thorgersen. Maybe we hadn’t ought to let him out again. He might try to ruin the deal. Say . . . you don’t suppose it’s McCord that’s been back of all the trouble we’ve had here?”

  I shrugged. “How could he be? He hasn’t always been the one to suggest the trade articles. He didn’t suggest the eggbeaters. And he couldn’t control the psychology of the Diomedes. Nope, I think this is, something concerning McCord alone—McCord and maybe Thorgersen.”

  “Where does Thorgersen come in, I wonder?”

  “They were here together the first time, remember.”

  “McCord was nothing but a drunken bum long before that. He probably has carried some sort of a grudge all these years because Thorgersen made a success instead of going along with a failure like McCord. But what I want to know is where this bath business comes in. No, I don’t either. I want to know if it’s going to be safe to let him out when he comes to, and can we trust him to deal with the Diomedes and Arthoids for us?”

  I shrugged again. “It’s either that or try to get as many Jewelworlds as we can by ourselves. In any event all we have to trade is the pens.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Captain Wilkins turned to go. “Let me know when he comes around.”

  McCord didn’t come around for two days. I thought the guy was going to die. I didn’t know enough or have the equipment—though I suppose Dunc Edwards could have rigged it up—to feed him intravenously. I was about to suggest Captain Wilkins try to raise a liner somewhere close enough to get to us a doctor when McCord finally roused.

  He rose from the bunk with a glassy look in his eyes. The skin hung on him like a loosely draped rug after his two days’ fast. He got down shakily and gripped my shoulder.

  “The pool, Stevens,” he said. “Help me get to it. I’ve got to take a bath again. Got to take a bath right now.”

  “Easy does it, old man,” I said, trying to push him bac
k into the bunk. It was still like trying to shove a baby elephant around.

  “No. Got to take a bath, Stevens. Help me get to the pool.”

  I helped him. There was nothing else I could do. Hap Paulson and a couple of machinists came along, too. All McCord had on was his shorts. He had even refused to don a shirt, and his great hulk was trembling and blue with cold. Hap was pleading with him.

  “It’ll kill you, McCord. You can’t go in the water now!”

  “Got to, fellows, or I may never be able to do it again. For eight years I’ve been trying to build up the courage. Now I’ve got it. Ask Doc here.” He nudged me.

  “What about it?” Hap asked.

  My feelings in the matter were based on no medical knowledge whatever, but I said, “I think we ought to let him go. I’ve got a hunch it’s going to do him more good than harm. If he gets pneumonia, we can lick that, but we can’t lick what’s in his head.”

  Hap gave me a queer look as if he’d put me and McCord in the same classification, but he made no further protest.

  When we reached the top of the rise by the pool, McCord stopped and began wagging his arms about in the air until the little furry Diomedes began tumbling over each other to get out of the water. Then McCord tossed off his shorts and gave the rest of us a shove to one side. He poised, trembling, looked into the water, and stopped—

  He seemed to collapse all over like a pricked balloon. We couldn’t tell whether his body was trembling with cold or from the sudden great sobs that broke from him as he began to go back down the rise.

  Hap and the machinists turned away. They couldn’t stand the sight of a man so broken by some inexplicable fear. But I touched him on the shoulder.

  “Maybe if I gave you a shove—” I suggested.

  He looked up at me with his tear-filled, baby-blue eyes like an ungainly St. Bernard. His head wagged slowly. “You know, don’t you, Stevens?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  It seemed to do something to McCord. He gathered himself into a knot and then ran back up the slope with all his might. At the top he closed his eyes and grasped his nose like a kid and leaped.

  The tremendous splash covered us with icy water, but we didn’t duck. We looked to see what was going to happen to McCord.

  For a moment it looked as if he were drowning, so violently did he thrash around. His face came up out of the water purplish as if he were struggling for air. Yet I knew he hadn’t been there long enough to use a half lungful.

  It wasn’t lack of air. It w7as in his head.

  Abruptly he stopped fighting the water. He struck out with a long, somewhat awkward stroke, but it was a stroke that had belonged to a once-experienced . swimmer. He went around the pool once, then stopped in front of us, treading water.

  “It’s gone for good this time, fellows. My hydrophobia’s gone for good.”

  When I saw Captain Wilkins next morning he was in a blue fury. I heard him raging up and down the bridge and before I even came in I could hear McCord’s name mentioned vigorously several times.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  The captain stopped long enough to eye me up and down as if I were an imbecile. “Wrong!”

  Then his eyes settled on me steadily and a beatific expression came over him. “Stevens—it seems to me that McCord has taken a strange liking to you. He told me last night that you were the only one around here that understood him. Maybe you can talk to him and straighten him out.”

  The captain’s voice was sugary and I knew it meant I’d better get some results or it would be my neck in the stocks next.

  “What’s he done?” I asked.

  “It’s what he’s going to do. He insists on taking this cargo of pens that I’ve lugged across seventy light-years of space and trading them to the Arthoids for their inferior grade of Jewelworlds that give enough distortion to make a man think he’s drunk every time he looks into one.”

  ‘‘Why not the Diomedes first?”

  “That's what you’re going to find out.”

  McCord was in the bathtub when I went in. He had taken six baths during the night and had had three more before breakfast.

  “What’s the dope on our new trading angle?" I asked.

  He dunked completely under the water and bubbled up again like a kid. “Just a new wrinkle. Going to make the Diomedes jealous and give us a better deal. I found out they could produce twice as many Jewelworlds as they do if they weren’t so darn lazy.”

  It sounded a bit fishy. I didn’t think the Diomedes had any capacity for an emotion like jealousy.

  "You don't mean to trade all our pens with the Arthoids, do you?”

  “No, just eight or ten cases of them ought to be enough.”

  “But that won't leave enough to make a decent trade with the Diomedes !”

  “Sure it will. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t know whether I will or not. Captain Wilkins is about ready to go out and try to make a deal himself.”

  That got McCord. He went pale all over. He stood up and began to dry himself. He was shaking again though the room was warm.

  “He can’t do that! Stevens, you’ve got to help me. Say you'll do it.”

  “Do what? I’d like to know what the score is.”

  “It’s awfully important to me,” pleaded McCord, “and it’s nothing that will hurt the traders, but we’ve got to work with the Arthoids first. Maybe five cases of pens will be enough to make the Diomedes jealous. Persuade the captain for me, will you ?’

  I had that hunch again that something tremendous—for McCord— was going on inside his skull. But I was a little dubious about his inexplicable desire to trade with the Arthoids first. That jealousy angle was phony as a glass eye.

  “I’ll do it,” I said for no reason that I could fathom. It was a hunch and I prayed it wouldn’t be a bad one.

  I went back to the captain and explained the jealousy angle.

  He looked at me out of one eye. “You don’t believe that gag, do you?”

  “Why not?” I said innocently. “Figure it out for yourself. These little gadget maniacs are craftsmen. When they see we're trading with their rivals first, they’ll know something’s wrong with the deal they’ve been giving us. Always we go to the Arthoids second and fill up with the second-rate stuff after we’ve got all the first grade we can get. We know about how much we can expect from the Diomedes so we reverse the procedure and get a better deal next time we come around.”

  “You’re either a blockhead or a liar,” said Captain Wilkins. “But if he only wants to trade five cases of pens to the Arthoids we’ll humor him. I'm going to see Thorgersen about this when we get back, though.”

  So we traded with the Arthoids first. McCord led the trading procession next day and five of us followed his regal obesity across the plain, past the pool where the Diomedes stopped to stare at us as if they coudn’t believe their eyes. They knew what was going on, but McCord didn’t give them a second glance.

  We paraded on over to the mesa on the opposite side of the valley, where the Arthoids were poking around in their caves. Their powerful, roselike odor filled the air. The five of us stopped while McCord went ahead to palaver with his arm waving. None of us knew where he had picked it up. He wouldn’t teach it to anyone else and any other traders had to get along as best they could, which wasn’t very good. I once tried waving my hands around in front of a Diomede for a couple of hours and the only response I got was his turning over and going to sleep.

  But it seemed as if McCord was having instant and overwhelming success. The Arthoids came tumbling out of their caves, apparently flattered by our coming to them first. Each one was juggling an armful of their second-rate Jewelworlds.

  We watched McCord pick up one and look at it. He set it down and haggled some more. Finally, he called us over and we began dealing out the pens in exchange for the Jewelworlds.

  I got that queer feeling in the pit of my stomach again about those pens as I saw
the way the little creatures grabbed them so excitedly, made sure they could operate them and then dashed up to their holes in the cliffs again. There was something distinctly not right, but it was only a hunch again and I decided to stay shut up.

  It took us quite a number of trips to bring back all the Jewelworlds we got for five cases of pens. The Arthoids refused to help. They said the Diomedes still had one bank of eggbeaters with a little power left and were waiting to catch some Arthoids at close range.

  By the time the deal was over and we had trundled the loot back to the ship the day was pretty well gone. The days are several hours shorter than on Earth, anyway. We decided to wait until tomorrow before approaching the Diomedes.

  McCord took some more baths. Nobody else could get in the tub because he was always there. I began to think he’d grow gills.

  And the way he drank water—

  I saw him drink three quarts in a row at least twice in that one day, and he had several pints in between as a sort of chaser. Once, somebody offered him a glass of beer and I thought he was going to lay the man out.

  Along about suppertime, which was after dark, the commotion started.

  It started as if the Cassiopeia were suddenly being pounded with a hail of shrapnel and a sort of unearthly squealing and yelling filled the air.

  We raced to the ports and looked out after turning on the outside lights. There must have been about four or five thousand Diomedes out there throwing stones at the ship and making those little squealing noises.

  “McCord!” Captain Wilkins thundered. “See what’s wrong out there!”

  McCord obediently got out of the bathtub and hastily donned a robe. He went out through the hatch and raised his arms above his head. The clamor stopped instantly but the little Diomedes crouched and cowered as if in intense pain. There was a lot of arm waving then between McCord and the furry creatures, then McCord slowly came up the companionway.

  “Well—?” Captain Wilkins looked as if he were ready to throw McCord bodily down the stairs again.