by Dave Dryfoos
“They’re even more boring” Janet argued, sitting up. Her gauzy film-dress and sleepy face made her look appealingly childlike. She was fifty-five.
Les was sixty, with a full head of blond hair atop six and a half feet of slim solid flesh. He sat up with the expression of an exasperated six-year-old.
“Go away!” he told the doll. It did.
“But I wanted some!” Janet wailed. She was careful, though, not to use the words that would cause the doll to return.
Neither did Les. He said, “Why don’t we take a couple of pills and go back to sleep till tomorrow? There isn’t a darned thing to do.”
“There never is,” Janet said. Then noting she’d inadvertently agreed with her husband, she quickly added, “But we can’t sleep—we did that yesterday. If we don’t move around we’ll practically stop eating, and anyway the neighbors will miss us. First thing you know we’ll be accused of either a hunger-strike or immobility. Then they’ll enslave us for attempting suicide!” She sniffed in self-pity at the thought.
“Ah, honk ’em!” Les said. “Slavery’d at least be a change. And slaves have something to do!”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Janet said tartly. “You know perfectly well they always torture slaves.”
“Yeah… But I just can’t face this any longer! I’ve got sixty-five more years of longevity, according to the doctors—and they’re never wrong, curse them! Sixty-five more years without the possibility of illness, want, risk… Even an accident is unlikely. Nothing’s going to happen in all that time! Jan I just can’t face it.”
“Isn’t that just like a man?” she scoffed. “You know very well I’ve got seventy years to go—five still to wait before I can even have my first child. You’re just being selfish!”
They glowered at each other. Then Les rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand, and smiled.
“Thanks, kid,” he said. “You really had me going for a minute. Now I feel better!”
Pleased with the compliment, Janet concocted an extra-fancy combination of films to spray on herself for the morning’s wear. When it was in place, she ordered a large breakfast and arranged to have the waiter-doll do a special dance-routine while serving.
But Les’s smile had vanished with the whiskers he’d rubbed off. He picked at his food, turned his back on the dancing, and afterward yawned away the few minutes they spent on their apartment’s terrace, stared at by fifty thousand neighbors who lacked anything better to do. When Les wandered idly off, Janet followed.
Les went to the living room, projected a book onto the ceiling, switched it off without reading, played with the glowing phosphors that lighted the room in colors he varied jarringly, fiddled with the console of the perfume aerosol and created a stink, and then, in sheer despair, turned on the puppet-set.
Its lighted screen listed the necessary dolls and props, so he laid them out. Soon the three-foot stage reflected a broadcast picture of the State Executive Office. A stringless, formally-dressed puppet sat at a desk, its blank face a transmitted facsimile of the Governor’s.
“…the last time I can make this announcement,” the Governor was saying into a hidden microphone. “The tests are to begin at noon. Jobs are now open! I repeat: jobs are now open! Men only, of course. But if any of you fellows out there suffer from boredom—and who doesn’t in this wonderful State of ours that by virtue of the New Energy Sources guarantees leisured security to each citizen—if, I repeat, you suffer from ennui, then why not apply for a job?
“Do it now—no further vacancies will occur for years, and we have some really desirable positions open this morning. Appointments will be made strictly on merit, as usual, with a job for every applicant and the best job for the top man.
“Though it’s true that losers in this competition are required to assume for life the less desirable duties that our civilization imposes, I assure you that isn’t as bad as it sounds. I was pretty far down the list in my day, yet I only have to be Governor…
“So won’t you please apply? I want a lot of competition!”
The stage darkened, and the puppet got up and walked to its box. Before the lights could go up on the next program, Les switched the set off.
“What do you think?” he asked Janet.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody in my family has ever worked.”
“Mine, either. But I once knew a fellow who’d tried for a job. He seemed o.k. to me, but he sure didn’t get a good one! Had a clerical position, with business machines, and their output was geared down to spread the work. So he didn’t have enough to do…just stacked punched cards or something every day for eighty years!”
“Oh, you’d do better than that, dear!”
“Maybe. Point is, there are jobs worse than no job at all!”
“I’m not so sure!” Janet said, suddenly determined. “Only a few minutes ago you weren’t very happy about the idle days ahead. Why not take a chance?”
“Take a chance? What kind of language is that? Chance went out along with disease and poverty and crime and accidents. You’re way off base, Jan!”
“But you have a chance—oh, all right!—an opportunity, then, if you like that better, to get a good job. Now, if I were a man—”
“But you’re not… Still…maybe I’ll try it.”
For the first time in a month or two, Janet kissed him warmly. And after she’d helped him into his wings and seen him off from the terrace, she felt a strange warm glow of anticipation. Not since she’d married had there been need for a decision that could bring change into her life. This was a Day!
* * * *
It was a Day for a lot of others, too. She learned that from the noon broadcast of the test ceremony.
“In my time,” the Governor said, speaking from the Capitol’s rotunda, “in my time a hundred aspirants was considered a good turnout. Today’s applicants total a thousand! We haven’t actually got a thousand jobs lined up, but we’ll get ’em! And I’m privileged to announce, now that the list of competitors has closed, that we do have the astoundingly large number of ten—repeat, ten—genuinely desirable appointments to make.”
Ten good jobs for a thousand applicants didn’t sound to Janet like an astoundingly large number. She’d been sprawled on a magnetically-positioned pad half-way between floor and ceiling, but she sat up when the Governor stopped talking, and with a twinge of genuine and unwonted anxiety watched the long file of applicants as they approached in turn the brain-wave analyzer, the voice-operated sorter that would add their life-files to current test results, and the officials who judged each man’s configuration.
She wished they’d announce the test results publicly, but knew they wouldn’t. So, when Les had gone through—about twenty minutes after the start—Janet shut off the broadcast, dissolved her dress-films, and had herself rubbed by the massage machine. The morning’s suspense was proving too much for her, and she didn’t want to have a headache when Les came home.
But even the mechanical masseuse couldn’t rub away her strange feelings. Not since marriage had Janet felt curiosity as to the future.
What if he got so dull they never even argued about anything? She shivered at the thought—but then she smiled. And for the next hour Janet lay under the soothing massage and gave herself up to the delightful new pleasure of worrying.
When Les returned, shadowing the terrace in his descent like some portentous bird, Janet began to shake. Without even waiting to kiss him, she said, “How was it? How did you do?”
Les grinned teasingly. “Help me molt, first,” he said. “I’m tired.”
Unable to get anything else out of him until it was done, she tore his wings off damagingly, kissed him, and said, “Now won’t you say something?”
“I’m hungry!”
“No!” She danced her impatience like a little girl. “Tell me!”
But ev
en as she pouted, her eyes sparkled in anticipation.
“I start tomorrow,” he said.
“Did you get the best job?”
“Nope. No, I really didn’t.”
“What, then?”
“Second best!”
“Oh, wonderful! What is it?”
“Rigger and high-climber—topping trees, setting structural iron, fixing flag-poles—that sort of thing. Powderman was first.”
“Oh, rigger’s wonderful!” Visions of his future work flashed across her mind, implanted there by childhood hours spent watching other members of this elite profession at their thrilling work. She knew there could be broken cables, falling pulleys, snapped booms, dropped loads—every day would have its interesting possibilities!
“My darling!” She threw her arms around him and was momentarily silenced by his kiss.
Then she stepped back, looked admiringly up at him, and said, “Oh, I’m so happy for you! And so proud! I’m going right in and order up a nice big meal. I know you’ll enjoy this one—it really might be your last!”
SIGN OF LIFE
George Main lay dying in the wreckage of the space-ship. Dying—and cursing the deadly wind of Venus. It had killed his mates. It would soon have him.
The wind was trying to finish him off right now. It shrieked, moaned, whispered and shouted through the smashed hull where he sprawled in his space-suit. Laughed, too. The wind was a murderer—and was glad.
All but he were dead. Soon the grit-laden wind would bury them and their ship. Then all the effort, the skill, the faith—all the ingenuity and labor expended on the expedition—would be wiped away, as invisible as the wind that buried them.
Thinking of that, thinking back over each agonizing hour since his landing on Venus, George Main wondered what he should have done, what he could now do, to prevent the utter waste of their efforts and their lives.
The wind was his enemy—and the wind couldn’t even be seen. Only the dust it carried was visible. Too visible. Dust was so thick in the upper atmosphere that the scope-readers had mistaken dust-clouds for solid ground.
With ports blinded by dust, the possibility of that error had been obvious enough. The navigator knew the risk. He chanced it—and lost the toss.
George knew he was still alive only because he’d acted like a childish eager-beaver. And had been tolerated by the others because he was the crew’s youngest member.
Ever since he could read and dream, he’d wanted to be the first man ever to touch the soil of Venus. So, having no duties connected with setting down the ship, he’d gotten into his space-suit and had waited by a hatch. He was standing there when the ship went into the twenty-mile free fall that smashed it.
George didn’t know who opened the escape hatch and shoved him out. That man was dead, along with the rest of the crew. Unlike George’s suit, the space-ship had no parachute.
He’d landed blind, in dust so thick he didn’t know he was down till he got there. For forty-eight hours he’d lain where he fell, waiting for a lull in the storm so he could see the ship.
When the wind finally quit, the ship was already half buried. Thirsty, hungry, stinking in the hot suit, George had staggered over windrow after windrow of dust to reach it.
He’d broken out an emergency-jug of water, found some uncontaminated food, erected within the hull a small gas-proof tent, and then passed out before he could crawl in the tent to eat and drink.
Later he’d gone out while the lull continued, to search for bodies. Like the hull itself, they were scattered over a wide area. Some were already buried in dust. The wind had buried them.
The wind—the murdering wind. The wind of formaldehyde that poisoned every drop of water it touched, every bit of food. The wind that limited George’s supplies to unbroken containers—of which there were tragically few.
The wind mocked him, then and thereafter. It mocked his efforts to find the ship’s log and continue it. It mocked his efforts to live.
He tried to fight back. He lay prone and relaxed because that took less oxygen. He lay in the suit and not in the tent because that took less oxygen. He ate and drank but once a day because that took less oxygen.
So he had run out of water while there were still some potassium oxides left to refresh his thrice-breathed air, some oxygen for the tent.
George Main wanted to live, knew he would die. And was enraged at the thought that he would die without having accomplished anything. He and his friends, and the pioneering scientists back of them, had put too much effort into trans-system travel to have it all come to nothing like this.
Stubbornly he noted in the log that he was now dehydrated to the point of occasional delirium. And that he hated the wind.
As if that wind had not already done enough, it now sought to destroy his last remaining moments of sanity. It brought horde of odd shapes to haunt him.
The shapes literally rolled into the dust filled metal cavity where he lay writing. The wind rolled them. But when they got into shelter—had rolled to one side or the other of the holes through which they’d come—the shapes began to move, slowly, under their own power.
They all looked alike. There were a couple of dozen, maybe— George counted ten and gave up because counting was too much like work. They were teardrops—eight-inch yellow teardrops with the point down. And each point rested on an extensible foot that looked like a blue starfish, about four inches across its seven points.
They came in, rolling along the ground as the wind took them, and then extended their stars from some hidden place and moved on them when out of the wind.
That is, they seemed to. But whether they were in the hull or in his mind, George was by no means sure.
Nothing could live in this wind. Nothing could live on a planet with no water, where the air was full of formaldehyde ready to react with proteins, the basis of life.
He lay motionless, watching idly. There was no sound but the wind. The yellow teardrops scattered out. They could have been exploring—or seeking shelter—or nonexistent.
When he got tired of watching them, George put the log aside and slept.
He awoke to find a small congregation of teardrops surrounding the watch strapped outside the suit on his left wrist. The watch was going—wound through habit every twenty-four hours, though that was but a third of a day, here on Venus. The teardrops were curious about it.
How he got the idea they were curious, George didn’t quite know. They seemed attracted to it, was all. There were no eyes, so far as he could tell—no ears. If these things had senses, they were not like terrestrial senses. But the teardrops did have an attitude of attention.
George removed his watch, laid it before them. Two teardrops detached themselves from the group to examine his right hand, with which he’d slipped off the wrist-band. Three others perched on the dust-covered deck, the watch between them and him.
George flexed his right hand, twiddled his fingers. The teardrops seemed unafraid. He chose one and lifted it. It seemed light in weight. Its star-foot was slightly prehensile, and grasped his glove with tiny claws arranged in rows on its bottom surface.The claws seemed for clinging, not for seizing. George put down the teardrop, turned it over, and found no opening anywhere on the surface. If these things lived, he decided, they must be plants, synthesizing their food—they had no way to eat as animals do.
Vaguely, George made up his wavering mind that the things existed outside his imagination. They were alive. They felt curiosity about him. Leathery, he found them—hard and smooth, except for the foot.
When he set down the teardrop he’d been examining, the three by his watch took up a rhythmic motion. The center one stood in place, swaying slowly above the watch like a bit of seaweed in a quiet lagoon.
Each of the other two had somehow obtained a pebble. They set their pebbles down near the watch. Each then tapped wi
th a star-point, first at the pebble, then at the watch. Back and forth they swayed, their motions synchronized—perhaps directed by the center one.
Interesting—but meaningless. It was equally meaningless when the two teardrops at his right began to dance. They found an empty food-can lid, pushed it near his hand, and began a concerted swaying and pointing that took them between hand and can.
Idly, George led the dance with a waggled forefinger. The teardrops promptly changed their motion. They stood in place, no longer pointing alternately at lid and finger, but swaying between them in time with George.
They were slow, though—he could easily have left them behind. But if he moved his finger slowly enough, they kept perfect time.
The dance at the watch had stopped. Many teardrops gathered around the pair that followed the beat of his right index finger.
It must have amused them. But it soon tired George. He stopped.
He needed all his remaining energy to think with. He knew these teardrops were sentient. They were curious, they communicated with each other, and they danced. They had minds, therefore.
George remembered hearing that Man had danced even before he learned to speak, in a primitive effort to express his feelings. He knew some birds dance, too—as a courtship procedure. Insects, even.
But why did the teardrops dance?
What was the significance of rhythmic motion between a pebble and a watch? A tin lid and a man’s hand? What did the pebbles mean?
The pebble was a native object, known to be lifeless, inanimate. The watch was a strange something that moved. The can-lid did not move. The hand—gloved, though they could not know that—was an object that moved.
The dance was a question, therefore, Alive, or dead? The teardrops wanted to know. Is the watch that moves by itself alive? The strangely symmetrical lid of a can, is it alive? The odd-shaped hand?
These teardrops had good minds—could grasp abstractions. In a sense, George felt, the difference between animate and inanimate objects is an abstraction. In his dying state, the notion amused him.