I Can Do Anything

by J. T. McIntosh

"Maybe I should try to explain it to you, Susie. A guy's got to talk to somebody, sometime . . . I spent four years on a dead planet once. This planet didn't even have a name, but the race that used to live there called it Xyt. It was four years before I was picked up -- "

  "I know, honey, said Susie patiently. "You told me."

  "I'm not supposed to tell anybody. More than that, I'm not supposed to do anything. That's why Cliff Burns is here. If I do anything, he's free to scramble me. Then he can leave here. But if he scrambles me and can't prove I did anything, he'll be sent back -- as a miner this time. I'm safe from Cliff so long as I don't -- "

  "Honey, you just don't make no sense."

  His head ached. The raw whiskey was still working on him. He knew, however, that even sober he'd be unable to make Susie belive what he said, and understand it. Susie was loyal and generous. She had a certain shrewdness which had once made him hope there was something to work on in her dark head. He had discovered however, that she was completely lacking in imagination, and that her shrewdness was merely the cunning any determined animal develops in jungle conditions.

  She couldn't understand anything outside her own experience, and in her experience people like Sammy and people like Cliff could never have anything in common. Just ast miners never crossed the figurative tracks to the Garden, people from the Garden never sank to the miners' level. If the charity of their friends didn't keep them from disaster, they'd lie and cheat and steal to stay in the Garden -- and if that failed, there was always suicide.

  "If only you'd believe me, Susie," Sammy whispered, "it wouldn't be so bad. I can do anything, Susie -- except control the encephalograph Cliff's got hidden somewhere. It would give me away. And if I make him show me where he keeps the scrambler and the encephalograph, it only lands me in deeper trouble. And it's no good killing Cliff. He makes two phone calls every morning at ten o'clock, and if he doesn't make them I'll be scrambled anyway -- "

  "Don't talk about killing, Sammy. Killing never did no one no good."

  "I never wanted to kill anybody but Cliff. That's all. I hate his guts."

  "That never did no one no good neither."

  "Don't you hate anybody, Susie?"

  She stared at him. "Me? Who would I hate?"

  He said nothing. a few minutes later she saw he was asleep. Sighing, she took off her dance frock and lay down beside him. He was trembling as he always did when he slept. She knew about that. It was the Dream.

  Poor Sammy. She loved him, pitied him, and admired him, all at once. But most of all she loved him.

  Shirley's bedroom was like something out of the France of Louis Quinze. The bed was an enormous four-poster with silk curtains which could be drawn for privacy within privacy. The dressing table was almost as massive as the bed, with three huge mirrors in which she could see herself in triplicate -- you couldn't have too much of a good thing -- or examine the back of her head if she wanted to. There were big cut-glass jars of cosmetics and silver-backed hairbrushes. And there was Shirley, standing in front of the three mirrors and looking at herself with satisfaction.

  She still wore her ball dress. For the moment she had forgotten Cliff, standing behind her, in her pleasure in her own beautiful body.

  "Shirley," said Cliff, "I want to talk to you."

  She pouted. It was hardly a compliment when a man admitted to her bedroom after the party was over wanted to talk.

  Cliff realized his mistake at once. In a moment he was behind her, pulling her against him and gently stroking her. She began to writhe in anticipatory pleasure.

  "There's nothing to talk about, Cliff," she whispered. "The passages are booked. We leave on the next ship, in two weeks' time. Isn't that whay you wanted?"

  "So soon?" Cliff breathed.

  "You've been trying to get me to fix it for so long . . . Daddy finally agreed this morning. I knew it would be a wonderful surprise for you, Cliff."

  It was a wonderful surprise, but it was also a shock. Although he automatically went on caressing Shirley, Cliff had almost forgotten her existence. His thoughts were racing, and they weren't thoughts of Shirley Benjamin.

  When he'd been sent to Cronfeld to keep an eye on Sammy Talbot, he had thanked his chief with heartfelt sincerity. It had been that or a jail sentence for his negligence in killing a girl prisoner. Banishment on full salary to a world with civilized society seemed, at the time, infinitely preferable to jail.

  He had even admired, at the time, the chief's solution to the whole problem. The chief had made no secret of the fact that he wanted Sammy scrambled, but the court had shown unexpected clemency, as courts sometimes did. Neither Cliff nor the chief really believed the stories about Sammy Talbot, but that wasn't the point. Scrambled, Sammy could be released, could be forgotten. Unscrambled, Sammy had to be watched. There was no doubt that Sammy could do something.

  After three years, Cliff had changed his mind. The court's merciful ruling -- that Sammy was not to be scrambled unless or until he used his trick again -- mean that Cliff was tied up on Cronfeld, that he had to employ a couple of assistants there, that every ship from Cronfeld had to be carefully checked . . . in short, the court's ruling meant that instead of the Sammy Talbot case being firmly closed when he was caught, as it should have been, it stayed open until Sammy obligingly got himself killed or gave Cliff reasonable grounds for scrambling him.

  In three years, Sammy had done neither.

  Cliff wasn't worried about anything Sammy might do. Sammy was such a whining, boasting, irritable, ineffectual character that it was impossible to be worried about anything he might do. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, Cliff had always acted as if Sammy really was dangerous.

  He had two auxiliaries, Monkton, who worked beside Sammy, ate with him and drank with him, and Keig, who lived in the Garden and had never seen Sammy. Each of them had a detector and a preset scrambler unit, and their job was to use the latter if the former ever showed anything.

  Sammy might nullify Monkton, but he could hardly cancel out Keig, of whose existence he knew nothing. Sammy was hogtied and he knew it.

  Cliff trusted Monkton and Keig for the excellent reason that they didn't dare cross him and they knew it.

  Lieutenant Gibson of the Cronfeld police also knew something about Sammy and about Cliff's responsibility for him -- not much, but something.

  In fact, scores of people were involved in the safety measures taken against the whining, ineffectual Sammy -- and all because a court on Earth had said, "No, don't scramble him yet."

  Naturally Cliff had thought often enough about scrambling Sammy and going back home with a convincing explanation. Unfortunately, he knew that he wasn't going to be convincing enough. Once Sammy Talbot was no longer a problem, Cliff could go back to Earth -- that had been the agreement. But Cliff had been assured that unless he returned with ironclad proof that he'd had to scramble Sammy, he would be on the next ship back to Cronfeld -- and this time he wouldn't be residing in the Garden.

  "I thought you'd be pleased," Shirley said. "Daddy didn't want to let me go. If you'd rather stay here, I can soon -- "

  "Of course I'm pleased," said Cliff. "I'm speechless."

  "Well, you don't have to talk," said Shirley. "There are other ways of expressing your appreciation."

  Idly, Cliff wondered how a girl in Shirley's position could be so insecure that she needed so much reassurance. There were rumors that she had been an unattractive child, strange as that seemed now -- did that explain everything?

  In any case, there was no doubt about what he had to do now.

  It was surprising how being compelled to do a thing turned what should have been a great pleasure into rather a bore.

  The Dream was always the same. First, Sammy lived through the crash again. Everybody but himself had been killed instantly.

  It had been one of those hyperspace disasters which no spaceman ever thought about, just as an airplane pilot with no parachute didn't think about crack-up in mid-air. There was no per
centage in it. If you were spewed out of hyperspace, your chance of rescue was no chance -- not one in a million, not one in any number of millions -- not any.

  Nobody was going to come out of a hyperspace vector voluntarily, that was for sure. The hyperspace routes were so carefully established that you didn't work them out any more; you fed the right card into the ship's computer. There was no card for the world on which Sammy's ship crashed. The chance of any other Terran ship arriving there was like the chance of a collision between the only car on the American continent and the only car in Australia.

  Sammy, who had been an ordinary spaceman then, survived the crash because he was thrown against a padded bulkhead which broke loose and careened on through the ship, to be stopped gradually by an aluminum water tank which acted as a giant hydraulic brake. Not unexpectedly, nobody else was as fortunate.

  He found himself on a cold desert world which had obviously once been hot, a world with the right kind of air but not quite enough of it, and once he fully comprehended his situation he honestly wished there had been no survivors.

  The ship was less than a wreck; it wasn't even a shelter. And there was no life, no water, in the desert in which it lay. Since his death from lack of air, food and water was only a matter of time, Sammy's decision to make for the mountains he could see to the north was not unreasonable.

  He reached the mountains fairly easily and found that they enclosed a vast valley at the bottom of which there was enough trapped air for his needs. So he wasn't going to die of lack of air, after all.

  There was also a stream whose waters he found he could drink without ill effects. He wasn't going to die of thirst, either.

  Althought there was an abundance of small animals little larger than rats but much less active, it seemed for some time that this fact wasn't going to help him much. Every time he killed and ate one of them, he was violently sick. He eventually discovered, however, that it was the mixture of Terran and native food that his stomach couldn't stand. It could and did adapt to the animal life of Xyt. So neither was he going to die of hunger.

  He still didn't look on his future on Xyt with any enthusiasm -- not even when he found the ruins.

  For two years the ruins in the valley and the things he found in them meant no more to Sammy than something to keep him sane. It transpired that the Xytians had used a kind of paper which was less destructible than their stone and metal buildings, and which the small animals couldn't eat. Consequently Xytian literature survived complete even when their strongest buildings and machines had collapsed in rust and ruin.

  At the end of two years Sammy was reading Xytian literature voraciously. Even children's primers had survived, and consequently learning the language presented no great problem to a man with unlimited time on his hands. He would never be able to speak it, of course; but since there would never be anyone, Xytian or human, to speak it to, this hardly seemed to matter.

  The Xytians must have been very nearly human mentally, although physically there had been few resemblances. Xytian anecdotes made sense to Sammy, even if they never managed to make him laugh. He didn't do much laughing on Xyt.

  At the end of three years, Sammy was beginning to understand Power. Power was the nearest equivalent to the Xytian word. Power had been outlawed among the Xytians, and yet it had killed them off in the end. Presumably, like most outlawed things, it was used by outlaws.

  Power as a means of doing anything -- or, rather, of making anybody do anything. It was partly telepathic, but mainly a technique for control of another person through the unconscious. In other words, it wasn't very far removed from hypnotism.

  A human being given a post-hypnotic command to do something, no matter how unreasonable, will dream up a reason for doing it which he is convinced is the real reason. Xytian Power went several stages further. In the first place, since it was telepathic, words weren't needed. In the second place, since the so-called unconscious was always conscious, even in sleep, it was always accessible. Third, the unconscious had no natural defenses -- you could invade another person's unconscious without having to get past it. Fourth, once you'd done in the victim's unconscious, his own conscious was on your side, working for you.

  At this point in his researches Sammy was still merely reading for something to do. There wasn't much direct instruction about Power in Xytian literature, naturally enough, since it was an illegal technique. But there was plenty about telepathy, which was perfectly legal.

  And one day when his studies of Xytian mental science were sufficiently advanced, Sammy read a paper explaining how telepathy worked through hyperspace.

  The Xytians knew nothing about space travel. They knew nothing of hyperspace as an extension of point-to-point flight, a way of getting from A to B without having to traverse all the distance between A and B.

  Being a telepathic race, they knew hyperspace only as a medium for telepathic communication. They had been in telepathic communication with at least a score of intelligent races in the universe. Not Earthmen -- at that time the ancestors of Earthmen had been swimming about in the sea.

  It was then that Sammy had his first wild hope of rescue. Could he learn telepathy? Could he learn Power?

  Could he make Terrans in Terran ships come to Xyt for him?

  Sammy groaned and turned over. But the noise which had disturbed him went on.

  He sat up, blinding pain in his temples. Susie was asleep beside him, so deeply asleep that the noise of the telephone out in the hall didn't bother her.

  Still drunk, Sammy climbed out of bed and staggered into the hall. Vaguely wondering why the ringing had disturbed nobody else, he remembered that Smith and Proctor, who had the two nearest rooms, had both been with girls at Nick's and probably wouldn't be back until morning.

  "Huzza?" he said into the phone.

  Cliff, too, had left a woman sleeping. Shirley, like Susie, was a very deep sleeper, and that was what had given Cliff his idea. The evidence of a mistress wasn't always enough for the police, but on Cronfeld the testimony of a Benjamin -- if it should happen to be asked -- was the strongest, safest, most absolute evidence there was.

  Some girls would object to giving tesitmony like that. But not Shirley. Shirley was quite open about her relations with Cliff. She boasted about them, as if she'd been the ugliest girl on Cronfeld instead of one of the prettiest.

  She would say he had been with her all night -- if necessary.

  "Sammy, this is Cliff. No, don't hang up -- this is vital. Sammy, you and I both want to get away from Cronfeld. Well, has it ever occurred to you that if we work together, we can do it -- both of us?"

  Samm was drunker than he had been when he had fallen asleep. Yet, Cliff's words made sense. Sure, he hated Cliff Burns, his keep -- his warden. Nevertheless, he had thought long ago, apparently long before the idea had occurred to Cliff, that if the two of them worked together there ought to be a way in which they could both get what they wanted.

  "Listen, Sammy, is Susie still with you?"

  Sammy looked around owlishly. There was no sign of Susie. "No," he said. "She isn't here."

  "Okay. Sammy, I've got to see you right away. Up by Ricky Chiotza's place. At the back, where -- "

  "I'm not going near that guy," said Sammy emphatically. "Had a fight with him. Bastard hit me with a bottle."

  Cliff had guessed as much. "It's just a place to meet, Sammy," he said. "We're not going to see Chiotza. We're just going to talk in that old shed behind his house -- to be out of the rain."

  Sammy thought tortuously. The shed behind Chiotza's house. "Okay," he said, and hung up.

  He looked down. He was stark naked. Well, that was all right -- no sense in getting his clothes wet.

  Why, he wondered vaguely, was he going to the shed behind Chiotza's? To meet Cliff. Cliff had an idea to get them both off Cronfeld. Might as well hear it. Could always say no. Would say no, unless Susie came too.

  He staggered downstairs and out the back door. The rain still poured steadily
. Sammy didn't mind -- it felt good on his skin.