by Mike Resnick
I love my computer, love its autocorrect function, its ability to tell me exactly how many words I’ve written and how many of them are spelled properly. But I live in the San Fernando Valley, at the very top part, in the wild northeast of Chatsworth, which is technically outside of the City of Los Angeles proper and only lingers on as part of the county.
Chatsworth has the dubious distinction of the being the porn capital of the world—something I only discovered after I moved there and noticed the sort of clientele that could be seen at the local coffee shops where I did much of my work—and it also had the distinction of being a place that suffered more than its fair share of earthquakes, fires . . . and power outages.
So that typewriter spoke volumes to me. It said, “Look, you can write when the power’s out! You can find a cigar and chomp on it, get a pipe and look serious. Pound out your words.”
So I went in the shop. When I asked about it, the shopkeeper got a funny look in his eye, and then he brightened. “It’s like new!” he said as he extolled its virtues.
“If new is a hundred years old, you’re probably right,” I said. But what the hell. “How much do you want for it?”
“You wanna buy it?”
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.
“Five bucks and it’s yours.”
“Five bucks?” That seemed way too cheap. I turned to where it stood in the shop window. “Does it work?”
“Of course it does!” he told me. “I just put in a new ribbon.” I frowned. “I’ll throw in a ream of paper, too!”
“Sold!” A ream of paper was worth five bucks all by itself.
“I’ll get the paper, you get the typewriter,” he said, scurrying into the back.
It was a bit of a hassle lugging the heavy machine out from the shop window, but not all that difficult—I didn’t see why the shop owner couldn’t have done it himself, but maybe that was why he only wanted five bucks—my labor was part of the bargain.
He came back with a pristine ream of paper. The ream was wrapped with a ribbon but the paper seemed in perfect condition.
“Here you go!” he said, slapping the paper on the typewriter and pushing the set at me.
“Don’t you want your money?”
“Oh . . . sure,” he said, taking the five dollar bill from me and slapping it on the counter. As I picked up the typewriter and the paper, he said to me, “Only thing: no refunds.”
“It works, doesn’t it?” I demanded, ready to throw it back on the counter.
“It works, I swear!” the guy said. His eyes didn’t meet mine as he added, “Only, I have had it in the shop too long. I don’t want it back.” I frowned and he added hastily, “The missus doesn’t like it, you see.”
This guy looked many things, married wasn’t one of them. But . . . five bucks and a ream of paper. What could go wrong?
I was eager to get my new find ensconced in my apartment, so I rushed home and up the stairs and into my one bedroom studio. I’m a writer, didn’t I say? Besides, I had alimony to pay.
I pushed some stuff off the coffee table in front of my defunct TV—an old tube type—and set the typewriter down.
I undid the ribbon on the paper, stuffed a sheet in, cranked the roller until the sheet was in front of the keys, and started typing.
“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazzy dog.” Hmm, the z key was sticky. I played with it, got it to work properly after filling up a row with z’s and then sat back, ready to write the greatest American novel.
Nothing.
I looked at the typewriter. I looked at the paper. I looked at the paper some more. I pulled it out and held it up to the light. It was really good paper. It was watermarked. The watermark was “ERB.”
ERB? Edgar Rice Burroughs? No, I thought to myself. Any paper made for him would have been used up long ago.
All the same . . . now it was hard to break that clean, watermarked paper. It could wait for another day. My trusty ol’ Apple would do just fine.
I left the typewriter and went to my office. That is, I went from the coffee table to my bedroom and the desk I had there. I fired up the computer, checked my mail, found something interesting on the Internet, and, before you knew it, it was dinner time.
I ate quickly, wanting to get back—or at least “get”—to work, but I just wasn’t in the mood. I was tired from my outing, and my bed looked too comfortable. Just a nap, I told myself as I lay down. You know . . . to think.
I awoke to a strange noise. It was coming from the living room. I looked around. It was dark. Some nap!
Tap. Clatter. Tap. What was the noise? Burglars? Someone nuts enough to want an old TV? I crept out of bed, found my baseball bat, and moved out into the living room, ready for anything.
Except that I found nothing. I turned on the light and shouted out a “Ha!” to scare anyone but there was no one there. I looked around, checked the bathroom, all the out-of-the-way places and then came back to the living room. Nothing. No one.
Maybe it was the pipes or the guy next door. Tapping on the walls or something.
I turned back to my room, ready to put down the bat and crawl back into bed, when—Tap!
I turned back and my eyes followed the sound. The typewriter. I picked up the bat again and moved around the couch to the typewriter.
The platen—the rubber roller on which you put paper—was empty. But a key was up—no, two keys stuck together! Someone was fooling with me. But whom? My last girlfriend had thrown her keys to the apartment in the sewer—no one else had keys except the super and I didn’t think he was that crazy—crazy, yes, just not that crazy, nor, come to think of it, anywhere near that bright.
I unjammed the keys and sat in front of the typewriter, trying to think. Maybe an earthquake had rattled the keys? A vibration of some sort, probably.
Then, as I sat there, one of the keys rose up and hit the platen with a woeful, desultory sound. I looked at the key. It was the letter ‘I’. The space bar thunked and another letter rose, too fast, jamming with the letter ‘I.’ It was the letter ‘m’. Another letter rose. ‘U.’
I brushed them all back and lifted up the typewriter above my head, peering up at the bottom of it to see if there was some mechanism controlling it. With all the silly “reality” shows nowadays, I might have found myself an unwilling participant in ‘Ghost Writer’ or some such. The thought wasn’t all bad—I could use the money.
I could see the mechanism move again but saw no sign of how it was being made to move. I lowered the typewriter. The ‘I’ key again. Then the space, the ‘m’ and the ‘u.’
Okay, I decided, I’ll bite. I unjammed the keys, rolled in a piece of paper, and sat back.
What happened next was too weird to be anything from a reality TV show.
The typewriter keys clattered, slowly, then gained speed as if somehow aware of the paper.
“I must tell you.” The ghost writer tapped out. “I must tell you before it is too late.”
No matter how much it is considered bad writing, I can only say that a chill ran down my spine.
A ghost was writing to me. A ghost using ERB-watermarked paper. Could it be Edgar Rice Burroughs himself? Oh God, and what to do about copyright then? Do I sell it as my own, or do I claim it’s his?
The typewriter didn’t care about such things. It was writing steadily, hitting the return when it got to the end of a line and the bell dinged, and it continued to the end of the page. And then it stopped. I stared at it for a moment until it dawned on me—I fed it another piece of paper.
The typewriter started writing again. The first thing it did was tab to the right and put up the page number: 2.
As the typewriter continued, I picked up the first page and began to read.
I must tell you. I must tell you before it is too late. Your world is in danger. You must prepare. You must be ready. God forgive me, it is all my fault.
I was born on Earth and fought in the Second World War. The last I remember,
my plane was diving toward the ground somewhere over Germany, having sent two before me to pay the ferryman.
When I awoke, I was on a new world. It took a while to learn the language and the culture. What I discovered was that my saviors were locked in a century-long war with their mortal enemy.
I joined their air force because I’d been a pilot and fought well—and I hoped to repay the kindness that I’d been shown. Finally I was entrusted with a mission of the gravest import: to infiltrate the enemy as a spy and steal their most secret technology, a power amplifier that could power a ship between planets.
The planets circling the sun of Omos were different from those of our own solar system. There were twelve of them, including Poloda, all equidistant in the same orbit only a million miles from their sun—a sun that was, obviously, much dimmer than our own. Further, these twelve planets: Poloda, Tonos, Yonda, Banos, Wunos, Zandar, Uvala, Sanada, Vanada, Rovos, and Antos (going counterclockwise) were enclosed by an atmosphere belt seventy-two hundred miles in diameter.
Having perfected the power amplifier technology of the Kapars, I was given the honor of leading the first expedition to our nearest heavenly neighbor, the planet Tonos. Handon Gar had begged to go with me, and I agreed, little knowing what trouble that would bring.
The night before we left, I kissed Harkas Yamoda and discovered that perhaps our relationship could grow to be more. I resolved to find out when I returned.
Our journey would be over five hundred and seventy thousand miles, and, even at our great speed, it would take us the better part of a week to reach the nearest planet.
We rose early that morning, Handon Gar and myself. We were seen off by the Commissioner for War and no less than the Elianhai—the High Commissioner—himself. Needless to say, both Handon Gar and myself were much pleased by the attention we received.
“Be sure to come back, Tangor,” the Commissioner for War ordered. “We will want to know how well the power amplifier works.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink as he added in a lower voice, “We have plans for that which will give the Kapars a nasty turn, don’t you worry!”
The Elianhai turned to him, his brows furrowed. “Is it really wise to send the only working copy and the only one who knows how it works on the same mission together?”
“It’s true that he’s the only one who knows,” the Commissioner agreed, “but we have the plans, and he’s explained them to our engineers.”
“Besides, he’s the only one capable of making repairs if anything goes wrong,” Handon Gar added in agreement.
The High Commissioner pursed his lips thoughtfully, then nodded. “I suppose that is so.” He smiled at me. “In that case, Tangor, go swiftly and return hastily!”
“As you wish, Elianhai,” I said, gesturing for Handon Gar to precede me into our craft.
It was packed with supplies, including oxygen, cold weather gear, and food for three weeks. We also had a small supply of weapons: we couldn’t be sure what sort of reception we would receive from the natives—or the native life-forms. I recalled my encounter with the zebra-lion with a shiver.
One innovation I had brought to Poloda was the flight checklist and we used it now, causing a certain amount of consternation for Handon Gar.
“I do not understand,” he said as I started through the list, “Did we not check all this last night?”
“We did,” I told him. “But it is better to be certain now when we can still fix things, than at one hundred thousand miles, don’t you think?”
He frowned. “I suppose.”
The checklist completed, I radioed the tower for permission to take the runway.
“You are cleared. Good luck!” the tower replied.
We reached the end of the runway, and I set the brakes before adding full power to the engines.
“Why aren’t we using the power amplifier?” Handon Gar asked as the roar of the engines rose.
“We have to be high in the sky before we can receive the power,” I told him. Why I had not shown him the installation that I’d set up which directed the power heavenward, I did not know. In the end, I was lucky that I hadn’t.
I released the brakes and pushed the engines to full power, and we roared down the runway. It took us a long time to reach flying speed, we were so heavily laden. We climbed slowly and steadily into the sky.
At ten thousand feet, I engaged the power amplifiers and our speed suddenly soared. I pitched the nose of our fast craft upwards, and, beside me, Handon Gar roared with approval as we pushed out to the edge of our world and beyond.
Our adventure had begun.
We’d brought cameras with us, and film, too, but early on I had to caution Handon Gar from taking too many pictures for fear of running out of film too early. Not that I could blame him in any way, and he would sometimes chide me for the same reason.
Our first round of picture-taking occurred when we left Poloda’s atmosphere and entered the thinner air between the worlds. We quickly realized that while the air might be breathable, it was so cold that it would freeze our lungs. However, with some fiddling, we rigged up a compressor system so that we could refill our air tanks along the way. This was a great relief to me, because it meant that we didn’t have to worry about running out of air on our trip even if it took longer than the three weeks we’d planned.
No one on Poloda could say for certain if the other planets were habitable. It was possible the air of the other worlds was toxic.
Landing on another world would be a problem too, as we had no way of knowing whether there would be runways on the distant worlds—any more than we knew whether there would be inhabitants. I had, however, accepted the advice of one of the older engineers and had our craft fitted with inflatable pontoons so that we could land on water. Handon Gar looked askance when I told him, so I didn’t need to ask whether he’d had any experience with floatplanes. Fortunately, I had had some in my former existence and was certain that the skills had followed me to Poloda along with my piloting.
On the third day we noticed that both Tonos and Poloda were the same size, and, gradually Tonos increased in front of us while Poloda diminished in the rear.
We grew increasingly anxious to see what we would find on Tonos, and I had to physically restrain Gar from zipping through all our film, not that I could fault him—the new planet was alluring.
I wished that we had thought to pack the chemicals and gear required to develop our film so that we could compare the images of Poloda with the steadily unfolding images of Tonos. Instead, we had to rely on maps and our own memories—Gar’s was better than mine.
What struck us both was how little blue sea we saw and how much white reflected from the planet looming in front of us.
“Maybe there’s a lot of cloud,” Handon Gar suggested as we puzzled over it.
“Or some gas,” I said, thinking of the hideous chlorine gas that had been used in the trenches of the First World War. When I mentioned it to him, Gar made a face and then grew thoughtful.
“We have not heard of such poisons at home,” he told me. “Are they really that powerful?”
“Some were even worse,” I said, launching into my father’s account of mustard gas at the Battle of the Marne.
“Thousands died in one assault?” he exclaimed. “When we get back, you must mention this to the Commissioner for War. We could wipe out whole cities in one raid!”
“It was a horror weapon, soonest forgotten,” I said, surprised and saddened at his viciousness. “And never did we willingly use it on unarmed civilians.”
“All the Kapars are armed,” Gar said as though that solved the problem. I recalled that he’d spent several years in their prison camp and wondered how much that had affected his sanity.
“That doesn’t matter, as we are looking for a new world of our own,” I reminded him. “The only question is whether we can breathe the air of this one.”
“This gas will not penetrate our breath masks?”
“No,” I said, sh
aking my head firmly. “In fact—” I cut myself short, deciding that he didn’t need to learn that on Earth we’d quickly learned to develop gas masks as protection. “I think our biggest question is whether we can find a place to land.”
We spent the next several days carefully watching the approaching planet, searching for likely landing places.
“I see no sign of cities,” Gar said one morning as I relieved him. We mostly shared the day but split watch across the nights, dimming our cabin from white to red lights. Ahead of us, half of Tonos was in shadow, half reflecting the light from the sun, Omos, as we were approaching the planet from the side. Of course, the planet rotated, just like Poloda, so we saw different continents wheel into and out of view in the slow, twenty-four-hour rotation. “There should be lights on the dark side.”
“Only if they are so advanced that they use bright lights for their streets,” I reminded him. “Would you see any lights from the sky over Orvis?”
“No,” Gar grunted, conceding my point. “But then, are you suggesting that this planet is also fighting a war?”
“No, only that lack of lights doesn’t mean lack of civilization.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough,” He said, ending the conversation and heading back to the rest area.
We only had to wait another day. Tonos now filled our entire view and Poloda, from the rear gunner’s seat, looked like a distant speck.
“Now what?” Gar asked as we surveyed the view beneath us.
“Now we start our engines,” I told him.
“What? Why?”
“Because our engines breathe oxygen,” I told him. “If they start, we know they have enough oxygen to function.”
“And then?”
“Then we land.”
The engines did start and I shut down our power amplifier with some misgivings, not certain how we would arrange our return journey—for the power amplifiers only pushed—neither Horthal Wend nor I had considered how to make one that would pull.