Can and Can'tankerous

by Harlan Ellison (R)

  It was chilly, even for the Dome. Somehow, the weather had fluffed up after the midday rain, and the Dome had gone colder than usual. For Sarna, who had been born in Ft. Lauderdale, and who had never known a cold streak—a really cold snap—till she worked a café in St. Paul one winter, Mars was a deep freeze. She constantly wore a Spanish shawl about her shoulders, and though her dresses were as skimpy and erotic as those of the other girls, she wore black mesh hose that kept her legs from chilling.

  For all her strange ways and despite the fact that her skin was a pinkish-white and not the normal hue of yellow natural to marties, her clientele was growing daily.

  Today had brought a Common Space Law student from Center U.; a grizzled prospector fresh from the radium licks out beyond Grosvenor Pass in the Telemites; a couple of jockeys off the mail ship from Asteroid 774; and a few marties, their whip antennae rigid with passion. It had been a steady day, hardly any time to think.

  When the Yellow came in, his face drawn with an expression strange, even for a martie, Sarna was the only one of the girls who did not shy away. She always felt an odd pang of near pity for the low half-breed martie Yellows. The other girls, all of them upper martie with that inbred prejudice against the jaundiced-flesh Yellow, or lower, marties, turned their backs to him, conversed among themselves.

  Thus, Sarna received the dubious honor of making the odd sort of love the Yellows demanded.

  He was somewhat under five feet, his legs and arms horny-shelled and thin as copper tubing. His skin was at least eight shades darker than that of the girls, and his eyes were big as saucers, without lids. His antennae were rigid—but it was not from passion. It seemed to be fear, and the tiny Yellow’s bony chest sucked in and out with the labors of fright.

  “Looking for a good time, Mister?” Sarna made the usual overtures. The little Yellow leaped at her voice.

  “I said: are you looking for—”

  He cut her off with a slashing movement of his spadelike hand. His voice was a deep rumble, hardly fitting the weak body. “You got back room in there, hah?”

  His Terra-pidge was terrible. Sarna immediately catalogued him as a rustic. He was more than likely from the area near the Telemite Mountains, where Center had set up lichen-farms. More and more these days, the rustics from out there were filtering into the Dome. She had even been surprised (though not outraged as the other girls) to see several of them in the Red Dog House during the past month.

  He repeated himself, urgently. “Back room, you got, hah?”

  She nodded slowly, not wanting to reveal her confusion at his imperative tones. And she had to steer him to the bar if she could. “Sure, sure, Mister. I got a nice room with a soft bed, an lots of fun, but how’s about a drink first. I’m real thirsty, ain’t you? How about a nice pony of RealSkotch?”

  He stared at her mutely for a moment, confusion swirling in his owl eyes. “No,” he finally blurted emphatically, “no drink. Room, away, back, now. Hah?”

  Sarna shrugged within her shawl, letting it slip off one smooth, white shoulder. She was resigned he wanted bed and no booze. “You got eight credits?” she asked bluntly.

  No sense fooling with a drifter, no matter how sorry she felt for the little Yellow.

  He grubbed around for a moment in the pouch slung from one bony shoulder, an expression on his face that said You, too, hah? You want my credits, too.

  As he fumbled, Sarna read that expression, and for a moment she was feeling herself ready to say forget the money, it’s a free go. But she caught herself: that was no kind of attitude for this business. She bumped herself inside; was she getting soft in the head, or just too sweet for this game?

  Her thoughts were interrupted as the Yellow came up with five crumpled credit plasts and a fistful of change. He dumped them into her cupped hands and made shoving motions. It was hers.

  “Back room, hah? Back room?”

  She did not count it, but it looked like ten, perhaps twelve credits there. For a second she considered giving him his change; then it struck her about never giving a sucker etcetera, and wouldn’t she look like a sappo handing a guy change in a house like this. She shoved it into her crotch-bag slit and turned, leading him down the corridor toward her room.

  She opened the door and walked in. He followed quickly, closing it and making sure it was locked. It was locked as far as he was concerned, but had she wanted to get away from a rough customer in a hurry, Sarna knew the secret knob-twist that would open it the reverse way on its hinges.

  She smiled to herself and started to undress.

  He turned around—his pointed, elflike ear had been pressed to the door, listening—and his saucer eyes grew wider and whiter.

  “No,” he said, motioning with his spade hands. “No like that. No. Nothing. Not want woman. No.”

  Right away she knew what he meant. And it floored her. He wasn’t here for business. The little guy didn’t want to go to bed; she honestly thought he— Oh no, for crine out loud, that was ridiculous! But it seemed he wanted to hide. She stared at him, standing there as she was, nearly naked, her skimpy thigh-length dress clutched to her body, and she saw the fear that rode him.

  It was chillier than usual in the Dome. She felt her teeth begin to chatter. The little Yellow stared at her pitifully. She felt awkward standing there. Awkward in her nudity for the first time since that first time. She looked around self-consciously, and then threw the dress over the chair in the corner. She pulled down the sheets and blankets and climbed into bed.

  There was no invitation or subterfuge in her action…it was cold in the Red Dog House. She pulled the thermal covers up to her chin and lay there looking at him.

  He was a pathetic sight, in his homespuns and his fear.

  She stared at him openly, and since he could not lower his eyes, his lidless eyes, he stared back. But there was a something swimming to be free in his eyes, and she silently asked him what. Tell me, what is it, little martie Yellow, can you tell someone? Then tell me.

  For no good reason, but she knew she had to ask.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  Her voice was soft and honest. He nodded his big head briskly. “Big troub’l. Big. Six.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

  The little Yellow walked to the edge of the bed, as though his thoughts were kilometers away, and sat down. His terribly narrow back, its strange spiked vertebrae sticking out; his thin body curved; he slumped, head in spadelike hands. “Oh, so too troub’l. So big. The Six.”

  He said the last word as though it was the key to everything.

  Sarna reached out from under the covers and touched his back. He started at her touch, but her hand was warm, and he looked away again, the fear sinking like dark sediment in the wide white pools of his eyes.

  “Tell me,” she urged him. “Maybe I can help you.”

  He shook his head. It was no use. It was no good. No one could help. His head-shake said all that, and more. Much more. The fear again.

  “Where are you from?” Sarna primed him.

  He glanced long over his right shoulder. He glanced longer than a glance, and he was silently asking Can I trust you? Can I tell you what has me so frightened? Or are you here to betray me, too?

  “Tellemize,” he answered, waving his wide yellow hand in the general direction of the towering ebony mountains. “Lich farm, farm for bosso. Farm good, no troub’l no time. Get pay siguel siutash fee orlasiutash,” he lapsed into Mart, then broke off at her look of confusion. “I good work. I pull lich alla time, no troub’l. Make coata.” Her look grew bewildered again, and he restated: “Coata. Make coata, alla much I s’pose have each day, hah? Coata? Know coata?”

  Finally Sarna understood. She smiled. “Quota, yes, I understand. You made your quota every day. Go on, go ahead.”

  The little Yellow rubbed his wide hands together, as though emotion was pouring from his fingertips. “I work s’good, much hard, they say me, ‘Ayto,’—s’me name, Ayto
—say, ’come. We got new jobs do you.’ It job in Tummeleyes…Tullmize…Tulla—” He so mangled the Earthie name for the Telemites, the ebony mountains, that for a moment Sarna felt compelled to chuckle. But the expression of utter terror on his face stopped her.

  “What sort of job, Ayto?”

  He pursed his thin lips, and his antennae quivered with suppressed emotions. “It be burying Six alive.”

  Sarna’s blue eyes widened. The way he had been saying Six had indicated a proper noun. Now he said it as though it meant something human.

  “The Six?” Sarna asked. “What are they?”

  Ayto’s deep yellow face crumbled. He buried his moon-shaped head in his wide hands, and from the cup of his hands he murmured, “Can’t say. Musn’ say. Tay kill me, kill me now, follow me. Benin’ someth’ng back.”

  “You mean someone’s been following you, trying to murder you?” Sarna asked, sitting up in bed. The covers fell from her body, and she felt strangely embarrassed before the Yellow; she clutched them back to herself once more.

  Ayto’s head came up. The antennae were rigid, the face deep yellow, the ears erect and quivering. His face was a mask of despair. “Men fool Ayto. Tell go lich pick in Telemites. Go place, thing, no ’splain right, place can’t see, no. Nothin’. Go there pick lich, they give Ayto shovel, make bury Six. Big sound, bang, go place part ex-ex-ex- word they say, go bang…”

  Sarna was having difficulty keeping up with the Terra-pidge. “You went someplace that you couldn’t see? A place that was invisible?”

  Ayto shrugged; he did not know the word. “Place no see.” He whipped his hands flat between his legs, and then to his eyes, to indicate not even his secondary sight perceptors buried in his thighs had been able to see the place. It was invisible.

  “It exploded?” Sarna asked.

  He nodded again,

  “What happened?”

  “Six go out, run, gone gone. No! Thought he Six go, but he just Five runned. One buried still…me thinkings mix up, sorries. I find one sick in lich, take, run far. They know Ayto gone. Know got one of Six. Follow. I me hide here. Mayb’ don’t fine go away, leave Ayto good, take one of Six, leave in street. Me go.”

  He was babbling with complete hysterical abandon. He had stolen one of those mysterious Six from the invisible stronghold of the Telemites, where he had been taken—presumably with the other Yellows—to bury them for some unnamed reason. Somehow, the stronghold had exploded in one section, not completely destroying the place, but freeing the Six. Ayto had found one of the Six—which he could not describe—unconscious nearby, and had compulsively scooped up the thing, and fled. Ever since, he had been followed, and he had escaped death several times.

  Sarna listened carefully, not understanding why she was so caught up in the little martie’s tale, but feeling compassion for him. Had the Yellows not been the minority race on Mars, had the upper marties not treated them like scum, there would be no such lichen fields, no cause for this little Yellow to work there, and what had happened would not have happened. She listened, and wondered what she could do for him.

  “Now me out, go, gone. Me take one of Six an’ t’row in street. They leave ’lone Ayto. Go. Gone.”

  Sarna caught his pipe-slim wrist with her own warm hand and asked him, “Ayto, you have the thing with you, on you, here? One of the Six?”

  Ayto nodded quickly, his little elf ears flapping, his antennae swirling in loops.

  “May I see it, Ayto?”

  Ayto looked at her, and the little deep yellow fork that was his tongue slipped between his thin lips. He reached into his pouch slowly, trust and hesitation in his eyes, and brought something out in his clenched fist.

  He handed it to Sarna.

  She looked for a moment, and her scream was loud enough to bring the four men from the alley—the four men who had been following Ayto for days.

  They burst through the rear window of Sarna’s room, while her terrible scream rattled the walls; and they used their knives on Ayto while the yellow blood poured across the sheets, and Sarna ripped at her blonde hair and opened her mouth wide and could not scream again, for even the awful death was less horrible than what Ayto had given her.

  The four men slashed Ayto’s throat, and ripped away half his left ear, and buried one knife in his chest. Then, as Sarna’s scream brought people running from other parts of the Red Dog House, the men looked about hurriedly, wildly, and swarmed back out through the shattered window.

  In a moment they were gone, and Sarna sat up in the bed, covered with the martie Yellow’s blood, her body naked above the covers, her flesh sticky with gore, and she stared at the strange thing Ayto had held in his hand.

  It had rolled away, at the edge of the covers, and instinctively she slapped it under the sheets. Somehow she knew no one could see it; in a moment of clarity amidst the madness, she knew what she had done and knew it was right.

  Then she realized what it was under the sheets with her, and her screams rose again to the ceiling. Ayto sank to the floor, one bloody hand dragging the top blanket with him, and he lay there silently. The door was broken open, and the bouncer of the Red Dog House barreled in. But by then it was too late. The killers were gone, and Sarna was screaming over and over and over at the death of a worthless lower-caste Yellow…

  And under the covers, one of the Six moved sluggishly, waking.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She kept it in a small jewel box with lead insets around the sides. She had a sturdy lock put on the box, and three small holes drilled in the top for air and light. She kept the box with her as much of the time as was feasible, or beside her on the nightstand, when she was working.

  She took a week’s rest. She thought about what had happened, and concluded a few things. Then she went back to work. She had to eat, and she had to live, no matter how she felt about what had occurred. When she entered the room for the first time after the incident, her face drained white, and for an instant she thought she might faint. But it passed, and she chided herself for being silly.

  After all, the yellow stains were gone.

  She closed the rebuilt door behind her and sat down in the chair, staring at the bed.

  She had worried for a time that the four men might suspect Ayto had given her the Six thing (as she had come to think of it), but as the days passed, and she realized she was not being followed, and as nothing untoward happened, she came to feel safe. The four men, whoever they had been, had apparently assumed that Ayto had merely been after fun and games, while hiding out, and had told the imp prostitute nothing.

  Yet she was keeping the box with her.

  Was she going to do something about what had happened?

  Perhaps, but what could she do?

  Could she tell the Mars Central authorities? Hardly, if the invisible stronghold in the Telemites was real. For Central had set up the lichen farms, and more than likely had a hand in what was going on there. She was hardly naive enough to think that the Mars government was free of graft and corruption, but she knew when to mind her own business. It didn’t seem smart to run and tell Mars Central about its own troubles.

  And any group affiliated with Mars Central that had killed the Yellow so callously would unerringly find her and wipe her out as quickly. What could she do? Did she want to do anything? Actually, to whom did she owe any allegiance? Why should she risk her life for a scummy Yellow?

  If she was in trouble, would anyone help her? She knew the answer, but still she could not wipe the sight of Ayto’s wide, helpless eyes from her mind. And the way he had lain there, clutching the blanket, his blood all over everything—

  She resolved, hesitantly, to do something.

  She did not know what.

  But she was in a bind, and she knew it. The Six thing was in the box, and she had the box.

  Sarna sat on the chair and stared at the bed—with its new darker-colored blankets—and her mind was a maelstrom of weariness and confusion. Something was happening out there i
n the Telemites, and she could not help wondering what it might be.

  Whatever it was, it had done Ayto no good, and would probably do her as much. She wanted to stay out of this, but every time she fingered the little jewel box, and thought of what squirmed inside, she knew she could not escape the mystery of the Yellow’s death.

  She had little time to worry about it, or to do anything about the Six thing. The next hour passed in deep moody speculation; all joy and serenity that had pulsed through her, despite her life and job, were now sand-bagged by the events of the past week. She sat in the chair for one hour, and during that hour the most frightening upheaval of Man on Mars was instigated, continued, and concluded.

  In one hour, while Sarna sat and brooded, Terrans were being hauled from their lofty perch of assumed rulership over both classes of Martians, and were being thrust into bondage across the face of the red planet.

  Mars Central now belonged to the marties, and Sarna was an alien on the planet.

  It had been brewing for years. The marties didn’t like the Terrans. It was natural, and logical. Why should they? The Terrans, the imps, had come in boldly, constructed a hundred Domes over fruitful farmland, shoved the natives into lichen farms and stuffy, ill-heated, ill-lighted factories; they had forced the flower of young martie manhood into the fields and the factories, and done even worse by young Martian women. They had gone to work in canning and plasting factories, or in duplicates of the Red Dog House, all over the planet.

  There had been no premeditation in any of this, merely the normal, natural instinct of the Earthman. A street, litter it; a population, employ it; a field, plow it under. It was normal, natural, and resulted in the overthrow.

  While Sarna sat there, what had been gestating for years, silently, feelingly, holed up in the ancient labyrinths and in the lich fields, came to pass.

  The overthrow.

  The first Sarna realized that all was changed outside was when she heard the sound of staccato burp fire in the streets. Actually, it was the mopping-up details, but she was not to know that till later. With the marties working side-by-elbow with Earthmen (who were too stupid to realize their “native” friends despised them), it was with little difficulty that the overthrow was accomplished. In offices and factories across the planet, marties drew stilettos from their pouches and calmly buried them in the nearest Terran.