The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Some specimens do,” said the technician, “by the time they arrive here. I suppose it depends on what people have done to them before they got here. I take it you did not get any of the dream-punishments.”

  “No,” said Mercer. “I missed those.” He thought to himself, I didn’t know that I missed anything at all.

  He remembered his last trial, himself wired and plugged in to the witness stand. The room had been high and dark. Bright blue light shone on the panel of judges, their judicial caps a fantastic parody of the episcopal mitres of long, long ago. The judges were talking, but he could not hear them. Momentarily the insulation slipped and he heard one of them say, “Look at that white, devilish face. A man like that is guilty of everything. I vote for Pain Terminal.”

  “Not Planet Shayol?” said a second voice.

  “The dromozoa place,” said a third voice.

  “That should suit him,” said the first voice. One of the judicial engineers must then have noticed that the prisoner was listening illegally. He was cut off. Mercer then thought that he had gone through everything which the cruelty and intelligence of mankind could devise.

  But this woman said he had missed the dream-punishments. Could there be people in the universe even worse off than himself? There must be a lot of people down on Shayol. They never came back.

  He was going to be one of them; would they boast to him of what they had done, before they were made to come to this place?

  “You asked for it,” said the woman technician. “It is just an ordinary anesthetic. Don’t panic when you awaken. Your skin is going to be thickened and strengthened chemically and biologically.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Of course,” said she. “But get this out of your head. We’re not punishing you. The pain here is just ordinary medical pain. Anybody might get it if they needed a lot of surgery. The punishment, if that’s what you want to call it, is down on Shayol. Our only job is to make sure that you are fit to survive after you are landed. In a way, we are saving your life ahead of time. You can be grateful for that if you want to be. Meanwhile, you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you realize that your nerve endings will respond to the change in the skin. You had better expect to be very uncomfortable when you recover. But then, we can help that, too.” She brought down an enormous lever and Mercer blacked out.

  When he came to, he was in an ordinary hospital room, but he did not notice it. He seemed bedded in fire. He lifted his hand to see if there were flames on it. It looked the way it always had, except that it was a little red and a little swollen. He tried to turn in the bed. The fire became a scorching blast which stopped him in mid-turn. Uncontrollably, he moaned.

  A voice spoke, “You are ready for some pain-killer.”

  It was a girl nurse. “Hold your head still,” she said, “and I will give you half an amp of pleasure. Your skin won’t bother you then.”

  She slipped a soft cap on his head. It looked like metal but it felt like silk.

  He had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from threshing about on the bed.

  “Scream if you want to,” she said. “A lot of them do. It will just be a minute or two before the cap finds the right lobe in your brain.”

  She stepped to the corner and did something which he could not see.

  There was the flick of a switch.

  The fire did not vanish from his skin. He still felt it; but suddenly it did not matter. His mind was full of delicious pleasure which throbbed outward from his head and seemed to pulse down through his nerves.

  He had visited the pleasure palaces, but he had never felt anything like this before.

  He wanted to thank the girl, and he twisted around in the bed to see her. He could feel his whole body flash with pain as he did so, but the pain was far away. And the pulsating pleasure which coursed out of his head, down his spinal cord and into his nerves was so intense that the pain got through only as a remote, unimportant signal.

  She was standing very still in the corner.

  “Thank you, nurse,” said he.

  She said nothing.

  He looked more closely, though it was hard to look while enormous pleasure pulsed through his body like a symphony written in nerve-messages. He focused his eyes on her and saw that she too wore a soft metallic cap.

  He pointed at it.

  She blushed all the way down to her throat.

  She spoke dreamily, “You looked like a nice man to me. I didn’t think you’d tell on me ... “

  He gave her what he thought was a friendly smile, but with the pain in his skin and the pleasure bursting out of his head, he really had no idea of what his actual expression might be. “It’s against the law,” he said. “It’s terribly against the law. But it is nice.”

  “How do you think we stand it here?” said the nurse. “You specimens come in here talking like ordinary people and then you go down to Shayol. Terrible things happen to you on Shayol. Then the surface station sends up parts of you, over and over again. I may see your head ten times, quick-frozen and ready for cutting up, before my two years are up. You prisoners ought to know how we suffer,” she crooned, the pleasure-charge still keeping her relaxed and happy, “you ought to die as soon as you get down there and not pester us with your torments. We can hear you screaming, you know. You keep on sounding like people even after Shayol begins to work on you. Why do you do it, Mr. Specimen?” She giggled sillily. “You hurt our feelings so. No wonder a girl like me has to have a little jolt now and then. It’s real, real dreamy and I don’t mind getting you ready to go down on Shayol.” She staggered over to his bed. “Pull this cap off me, will you? I haven’t got enough will power left to raise my hands.”

  Mercer saw his hand tremble as he reached for the cap.

  His fingers touched the girl’s soft hair through the cap. As he tried to get his thumb under the edge of the cap, in order to pull it off, he realized that this was the loveliest girl he had ever touched. He felt that he had always loved her, that he always would. Her cap came off. She stood erect, staggering a little before she found a chair to hold to. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  “Just a minute,” she said in her normal voice. “I’ll be with you in just a minute. The only time I can get a jolt of this is when one of you visitors gets a dose to get over the skin trouble.”

  She turned to the room mirror to adjust her hair. Speaking with her back to him, she said, “I hope I didn’t say anything about downstairs.”

  Mercer still had the cap on. He loved this beautiful girl who had put it on him. He was ready to weep at the thought that she had had the same kind of pleasure which he still enjoyed. Not for the world would he say anything which could hurt her feelings. He was sure she wanted to be told that she had not said anything about “downstairs”—probably shop talk for the surface of Shayol—so he assured her warmly, “You said nothing. Nothing at all.” .

  She came over to the bed, leaned, kissed him on the lips. The kiss was as far away as the pain; he felt nothing; the Niagara of throbbing pleasure which poured through his head left no room for more sensation. But he liked the friendliness of it. A grim, sane corner of his mind whispered to him that this was probably the last time he would ever kiss a woman, but it did not seem to matter.

  With skilled fingers she adjusted the cap on his head. “There, now. You’re a sweet guy. I’m going to pretend-forget and leave the cap on you till the doctor comes.”

  With a bright smile she squeezed his shoulder.

  She hastened out of the room.

  The white of her skirt flashed prettily as she went out the door. He saw that she had very shapely legs indeed.

  She was nice, but the cap ... ah, it was the cap that mattered! He closed his eyes and let the cap go on stimulating the pleasure centers of his brain. The pain in his skin was still there, but it did not matter any more than did the chair standing in the corner. The pain was just something that happened to be in the room.

 
A firm touch on his arm made him open his eyes.

  The older, authoritative-looking man was standing beside the bed, looking down at him with a quizzical smile.

  “She did it again,” said the old man.

  Mercer shook his head, trying to indicate that the young nurse had done nothing wrong.

  “I’m Doctor Vomact,” said the older man, “and I am going to take this cap off you. You will then experience the pain again, but I think it will not be so bad. You can have the cap several more times before you leave here.”

  With a swift, firm gesture he snatched the cap off Mercer’s head.

  Mercer promptly doubled up with the inrush of fire from his skin. He started to scream and then saw that Doctor Vomact was watching him calmly.

  Mercer gasped, “It is—easier now.”

  “I knew it would be,” said the doctor. “I had to take the cap off to talk to you. You have a few choices to make.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” gasped Mercer.

  “You have committed a serious crime and you are going down to the surface of Shayol.”

  “Yes,” said Mercer.

  “Do you want to tell me your crime?”

  Mercer thought of the white palace walls in perpetual sunlight, and the soft mewing of the little things when he reached them. He tightened his arms, legs, back and jaw. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s the crime without a name. Against the Imperial family ... “

  “Fine,” said the doctor, “that’s a healthy attitude. The crime is past. Your future is ahead. Now, I can destroy your mind before you go down—if you want me to.”

  “That’s against the law,” said Mercer.

  Doctor Vomact smiled warmly and confidently. “Of course it is. A lot of things are against human law. But there are laws of science, too. Your body, down on Shayol, is going to serve science. It doesn’t matter to me whether that body has Mercer’s mind or the mind of a low-grade shellfish. I have to leave enough mind in you to keep the body going, but I can wipe out the historic you and give your body a better chance of being happy. It’s your choice, Mercer. Do you want to be you or not?”

  Mercer shook his head back and forth, “I don’t know.”

  “I’m taking a chance,” said Doctor Vomact, “in giving you this much leeway. I’d have it done if I were in your position. It’s pretty bad down there.”

  Mercer looked at the full, broad face. He did not trust the comfortable smile. Perhaps this was a trick to increase his punishment. The cruelty of the Emperor was proverbial. Look at what he had done to the widow of his predecessor, the Dowager Lady Da. She was younger than the Emperor himself, and he had sent her to a place worse than death. If he had been sentenced to Shayol, why was this doctor trying to interfere with the rules? Maybe the doctor himself had been conditioned, and did not know what he was offering.

  Doctor Vomact read Mercer’s face. “All right. You refuse. You want to take your mind down with you. It’s all right with me. I don’t have you on my conscience. I suppose you’ll refuse the next offer too. Do you want me to take your eyes out before you go down? You’ll be much more comfortable without vision. I know that, from the voices that we record for the warning broadcasts. I can sear the optic nerves so that there will be no chance of your getting vision again.”

  Mercer rocked back and forth. The fiery pain had become a universal itch, but the soreness of his spirit was greater than the discomfort of his skin.

  “You refuse that, too?” said the doctor. “I suppose so,” said Mercer.

  “Then all I have to do is to get ready. You can have the cap for a while, if you want.”.

  Mercer said, “Before I put the cap on, can you tell me what happens down there?”

  “Some of it,” said the doctor. “There is an attendant. He is a man, but not a human being. He is a homunculus fashioned out of cattle material. He is intelligent and very conscientious. You specimens are turned loose on the surface of Shayol. The dromozoa are a special life-form there. When they settle in your body, B’dikkat—that’s the attendant—carves them out with an anesthetic and sends them up here. We freeze the tissue cultures, and they are compatible with almost any kind of oxygen-based life. Half the surgical repair you see in the whole universe comes out of buds that we ship from here. Shayol is a very healthy place, so far as survival is concerned. You won’t die.”

  “You mean,” said Mercer, “that I am getting perpetual punishment.”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Doctor Vomact. “Or if I did, I was wrong. You won’t die soon. I don’t know how long you will live down there. Remember, no matter how uncomfortable you get, the samples which B’dikkat sends up will help thousands of people in all the inhabited worlds. Now take the cap.”

  “I’d rather talk,” said Mercer. “It may be my last chance.”

  The doctor looked at him strangely. “If you can stand that pain, go ahead and talk.”

  “Can I commit suicide down there?”

  “I don’t know,” said the doctor. “It’s never happened. And to judge by the voices, you’d think they wanted to.”

  “Has anybody ever come back from Shayol?”

  “Not since it was put off limits about four hundred years ago.”

  “Can I talk to other people down there?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor.

  “Who punishes me down there?”

  “Nobody does, you fool,” cried Doctor Vomact. “It’s not punishment. People don’t like it down on Shayol, and it’s better, I guess, to get convicts instead of volunteers. But there isn’t anybody against you at all.”

  “No jailers?” asked Mercer, with a whine in his voice.

  “No jailers, no rules, no prohibitions. Just Shayol, and B’dikkat to take care of you. Do you still want your mind and your eyes?”

  “I’ll keep them,” said Mercer. “I’ve gone this far and I might as well go the rest of the way.”

  “Then let me put the cap on you for your second dose,” said Doctor Vomact.

  The doctor adjusted the cap just as lightly and delicately as had the nurse; he was quicker about it. There was no sign of his picking out another cap for himself.

  The inrush of pleasure was like a wild intoxication. His burning skin receded into distance. The doctor was near in space, but even the doctor did not matter. Mercer was not afraid of Shayol. The pulsation of happiness out of his brain was too great to leave room for fear or pain.

  Doctor Vomact was holding out his hand.

  Mercer wondered why, and then realized that the wonderful, kindly cap-giving man was offering to shake hands. He lifted his own. It was heavy, but his arm was happy, too.

  They shook hands. It was curious, thought Mercer, to feel the handshake beyond the double level of cerebral pleasure and dermal pain.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Mercer,” said the doctor. “Goodbye and a good goodnight ... “

  2

  The ferry satellite was a hospitable place. The hundreds of hours that followed were like a long, weird dream.

  Twice again the young nurse sneaked into his bedroom with him when he was being given the cap and had a cap with him. There were baths which calloused his whole body. Under strong local anesthetics, his teeth were taken out and stainless steel took their place. There were irradiations under blazing lights which took away the pain of his skin. There were special treatments for his fingernails and toenails. Gradually they ‘changed into formidable claws; he found himself stropping them on the aluminum bed one night and saw that they left deep marks.

  His mind never became completely clear.

  Sometimes he thought that he was home with his mother, that he was little again, and in pain. Other times, under the cap, he laughed in his bed to think that people were sent to this place for punishment when it was all so terribly much fun. There were no trials, no questions, no judges. Food was good, but he did not think about it much; the cap was better. Even when he was awake, he was drowsy.

  At last, with the cap o
n him, they put him into an adiabatic pod—a one-body missile which could be dropped from the ferry to the planet below. He was all closed in, except for his face.

  Doctor Vomact seemed to swim into the room. “You are strong, Mercer,” the doctor shouted, “you are very strong! Can you hear me?”

  Mercer nodded.

  “We wish you well, Mercer. No matter what happens, remember you are helping other people up here.”

  “Can I take the cap with me?” said Mercer.

  For an answer, Doctor Vomact removed the cap himself. Two men closed the lid of the pod, leaving Mercer in total darkness. His mind started to clear, and he panicked against his wrappings.

  There was the roar of thunder and the taste of blood.