Turn Left at Thursday (1961) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  Hardee looked at Joan Bunnell and put his arm protectingly around the boy. 'Would that be October, 1959?' he asked.

  'It would,' said Griswold heavily. 'You begin to understand, I see.

  That's what happened to all of you at the colony. You weren't criminals--

  except that, in the eyes of the skulls, it's a crime to be human at all.'

  Not criminals! No forgotten crime to expiate! Hardee could scarcely believe it. But Griswold was still talking:

  'They want our planet,' he explained. 'One shipload came, to get things ready, an advance party. I don't know when the rest of them will be here--but they're on their way. Perhaps a year or two. And they need to have the human race under control by then.'

  He rubbed his arm and stared up at the sky. 'So some of us are helping them,' he said flatly. 'Call us traitors--we are! But what else is there to do? The skulls gave us a very simple alternative. Either we help them study us so that they can learn to rule the human race ... or they go back out into their ship and spray the Earth with another ray. Not a sleep ray, but one that will wipe out all life entirely.'

  Griswold spread his hands. 'It's a choice that isn't any choice,' he said. 'What else was there? So when they woke me--I was one of the first few hundred; now there must be tens of thousands--they learned, after we established communication, that I was a psychologist. It was exactly what they needed. They set me the problem of contriving an experimental colony

  - a test farm, if you like, where the human animal could be kept in conditions as close to natural as possible.

  'It was their ship, orbiting out there, that made me think of Mars--it does look like a second moon. Luna was no real problem. A simple post-hypnotic command and none of you could focus on it enough to recognize the features. But I couldn't erase knowledge of Mars, if it existed in any of you. There is no invention, of course, that causes partial--and selective--amnesia in criminals. That was a lie to make you accept this plateau as a penal colony on Mars.'

  'But what in hell for? ' Hardee asked angrily.

  'So nobody would try to escape. Thinking you were on Mars, you wouldn't hope to get to Earth. Knowing you were on Earth, you'd do anything to reach civilization--not realizing there wasn't any left. Skitterbugs wouldn't get harvested. Skulls would be killed. The colony would be trouble instead of useful--and it would then be wiped out.

  'I wanted to keep as many people alive for as long as I could.' said Griswold. 'There was no other chance for humanity.'

  'What do we do now?' Hardee grimly demanded.

  Griswold hesitated. 'There are a few free humans,' he said reluctantly.

  'Not many. They live in the woods in hiding, some of them in the cities themselves. Mostly they are ignored by the skulls--because there are so few. If there weren't, the skulls would take the easy way out. The Earth is their new home, you see, and they regard it as you would your house. You might tolerate a few vermin--but if there are too many, you'll call in the exterminators. But there are these few, and if we can somehow make our way to them, we might have a chance to--'

  'Hush!' breathed Joan Bunnell.

  She caught the boy to her, pointing. Out of the woods at the side of the field raced a posse of skitterbugs, each with its bronze death's-head rider.

  Hardee tried to fight, though there were hundreds of the creatures. If Wakulla had not been so profligate with his bullets But he had been; and the single bullet in the gun was more frustrating than none at all.

  'Too late,' groaned Griswold, his tortured face sagging with fear. 'Give up, Hardee! Otherwise they'll kill us right here!'

  They were marched down a road and into the environs of a city, the skitterbugs with their bright bronze riders a disorderly rabble around them.

  None of them recognized the city; it might have been anywhere. It was a silent city, a city of death. Even from the streets, they could see men and women who had been struck down in the middle of life. A mother with three children around her sprawled in a Laocoon down porch steps; a postman with his two-wheeled cart beside him, his letters long since blown away.

  And there were living, waking humans too. Chuck shivered and caught his father's arm as they rounded a corner and saw a work gang--ten or twelve men, in rags of clothing, clearing rubble from a tumbled house that lay across a side street; they looked up as Hardee and the rest passed, but there was no emotion in their eyes, only weariness.

  'Those others,' whispered Joan. 'Are they dead?'

  'No,' said Tavares heavily, 'not if what Griswold tells us is true. But they might as well be. Unless--'

  'Don't even think it!' begged Griswold. 'Some of the skulls can understand English!'

  'Let them understand!' cried Hardee. He stopped and faced them.

  'We'll fight you!' he shouted. 'You can't have our planet--not now or ever!

  The human race isn't going to be taken over by a bunch of bugs from another planet!'

  Incuriously, the blank-eyed bronze skulls stared at him; almost as incuriously, the ragged men looked on.

  The skulls prodded Hardee on, and the ragged men went back to their work.

  The prisoners were taken to a big building that bore on it a sign, Hotel Winchester. Once it had been a commercial hotel; now it seemed to be headquarters for the skitterbugs and the skulls that rode them.

  Without a word, they were put in a room on a gallery that overlooked the lobby. The floor of the lobby was a seething mass of skitterbugs with their riders--and some skulls which had found a different sort of mount, for they perched on the shoulders of ragged men.

  The door was closed, and they were left alone.

  It was a partly glass door; Hardee peered out. 'They must have come from a light-gravity planet,' he guessed. 'They move badly without the skitterbugs. They can't be very strong.'

  'They don't need to be,' said Griswold somberly. 'Not with their weapons.'

  'What about at night?' asked Hardee. 'Surely the skitterbugs can't operate very well without light. Can't we--'

  But Griswold was shaking his head. 'They keep all the areas of the city where they move about well lighted. No, Hardee. The skulls are way ahead of you.' He sat down and sighed. 'I think they'll kill us,' he said without emotion. 'It's either that or the labour gangs.'

  Old man Tavares said something incandescent in Spanish. 'You may die, Griswold, but I'll fight. Look, why can we not get away? Soon it will be dark, as Hardee says, and it is then only a matter of getting away from the lighted areas. Why not?'

  'Wait,' Hardee interrupted, staring out the glass of the door.

  'Someone's coming.'

  They crowded around.

  Down the long gallery that surrounded the lobby, a tall man with angry eyes approached.

  Hope surged--a human, and free!

  But then they saw that on his shoulder rode one of the bronze skulls, motionless, the hollow eyes emptily staring.

  'He is probably our executioner,' said Griswold, as though announcing the time of day.

  'Not without a fight,' said Hardee tensely. 'Tavares, you stand over here. I'll wait on the other side. Joan, you take Chuck to the far side of the room. See if you can make the skull look at you! And Griswold--'

  'It won't work,' said Griswold stubbornly, but he went with Joan and the boy.

  The door opened.

  As soon as the man and his rider were inside, Hardee lunged against the door, slammed it shut. 'Now!' he shouted, and leaped towards the pair.

  The angry eyes of the man opened wide in astonishment. Hastily he stepped back. 'Wait!' he cried, stumbling-And the bronze skull toppled from his shoulder.

  It rolled across the room and lay motionless on the floor.

  Hardee jumped for it as though it were a hand grenade, fallen back into his own rifle pit; but the new man with the angry eyes yelled: 'Don't waste your time! That one's dead--I killed it myself!'

  Hardee stopped short, gaping.

  The man grinned tightly. 'It keeps the others from bothering me,' he e
xplained. 'Don't mess it up--we'll need it to get out of here. Come on!'

  'Where?' asked Hardee, trying to take it in. It was hope, it was rescue

  - when they had expected it least.

  'Down the end of the gallery,' said the man, 'there's a linen closet. In it is a laundry chute. It goes down to the cellar. The skulls don't go there much--the lights are bad; we keep them that way. And there are sewers and passages. If we reach the chute, we're safe.'

  He opened the door, peered out. 'You go ahead, all of you. I'll follow, as though I'm taking you somewhere.' He closed the door and bent down to recover his skull. 'Mustn't forget Oscar,' he said. 'He's our passport.'

  He opened a leather strap that passed around his neck and shoulder, bound it around the dead skull, buckled it again. Experimentally he bowed slightly from the waist. The skull wobbled but stayed on.

  'Don't jar me,' he said, and crossed his fingers. He opened the door a crack, looked down the corridor and nodded.

  'Let's go!' he said, and flung it wide.

  The procession moved down the gallery. Dust was thick on the leather settees that lined it; the skulls had no need for them, and no human without a skull possessing it had passed that way in five years. There were skitterbugs with skulls upon them at the end of the gallery, but they didn't seem to notice anything. Down in the lobby, a few of the men with skull riders glanced up, but no one challenged.

  It was twenty yards to the door of the linen closet.

  Fifteen yards were easy.

  Then, out of a ballroom that was now a pen for the human slaves of the skulls, two skitterbugs with skulls upon them came out. They paused and then one of them opened its queerly articulated transverse mouth and made a sound, a chanting metallic whine--speaking to the skull on the shoulder of their rescuer.

  Hardee caught Joan's arm, took a tighter grip on the hand of the boy by his side, lengthening his stride. So near! And then--

  Quick as lightning, the skitterbug with the skull on it leaped forward and clutched at the legs of the man who was shepherding them.

  He kicked it away. 'Run!' he yelled.

  The skull on his shoulder fell free and bumped lifelessly away. Three more skulls, riding skitterbugs, popped out of the ballroom. Down on the lobby floor there was a stirring and a whining commotion.

  'Run!' he yelled again, and shoved them powerfully forward to the linen closet.

  They made the door, just in time. It was the size of a small room, and they all crammed inside.

  Hardee slammed the door and held it. 'Jump! I'll stay here and keep them out.'

  The boy cried out once, then was silent. He glanced at his father as Tavares and the other man lifted him into the chute; but he didn't say a word when they let go and he slid out of sight.

  'Go ahead, Joan!' barked Hardee.

  Restless scratchings outside told him the skitterbugs were there.

  Then he could feel the door pressing against him. He cursed the clever, economical designers of the building, who had known better than to put a lock on the inside of a linen closet. If there had been one, they could all escape. But since there was not--

  Griswold glanced at the chute, looked at Hardee, and nervously tongued his dry lips.

  Tavares was in the chute now; he waved, and dropped out of sight.

  Griswold turned his back on the chute.

  He walked over to Hardee. 'I've got a broken arm,' he said, 'and, you know, I'm not sure the free humans would welcome me. You go, Hardee.'

  'But-'

  'Go ahead!' Griswold thrust him away. There was more strength than Hardee had expected in the worn, injured body. 'I doubt I could make it anyway, with this arm--but I can hold them for a minute!'

  Already the other man was gone; it was only Griswold and Hardee there, and the scratching and shoving were growing more insistent.

  'All right,' said Hardee at last. 'Griswold--'

  But he didn't know what it was, exactly, that he wanted to say; and besides, there was no time.

  Griswold, sweat pouring into his eyes, chuckled faintly for the first time since Hardee had known him.

  'Hurry!' he said, and looked embarrassed as he held up two fingers in a shaky V. But he looked embarrassed only for an instant. The fingers firmed into a spiky, humanly stubborn, defiant sign of victory. 'Save the children,' Griswold said. 'I couldn't get the skulls to let many into the colony

  - a waste, they told me, because kids can't work. Save the children!'

  Hardee turned away--towards the laundry chute, and towards a new life.

  The Richest Man in Levittown

  Margery tried putting the phone back on the hook, but it immediately rang again. She kicked the stand, picked up the phone and said: "Hang up, will you? We don't want any!" She slammed the phone down to break the connection and took it off the hook again.

  The doorbell rang.

  "My turn," I said, and put down the paper—it looked as though I never would find out what the National League standings were. It was Patrolman Gamelsfelder.

  "Man to see you, Mr. Binns. Says it's important." He was sweating—you could see the black patches on his blue shirt. I knew what he was thinking: We had air conditioning and money, and he was risking his life day after day for a lousy policeman's pay, and what kind of a country was this anyhow? He'd said as much that afternoon.

  "It might be important to him, but I don't want to see anybody. Sorry, officer." I closed the door.

  Margery said: "Are you or are you not going to help me change the baby?"

  I said cheerfully: "I'll be glad to, dear." And it was true—besides being good policy to say that, since she was pretty close to exploding. It was true because I wanted something to do myself. I wanted some nice, simple, demanding task like holding a one-year-old down with my knee in the middle of his chest, while one hand held his feet and the other one pinned the diaper. I mean, it was nice of Uncle Otto to leave me the money, but did they have to put it in the paper?

  The doorbell rang again as I was finishing. Margery was upstairs with Gwennie, who took a lot of calming down because she'd had an exciting day, and because she always did, so I stood the baby on his fat little feet and answered the door myself. It was the policeman again. "Some telegrams for you, Mr. Binns. I wooden let the boy deliver them."

  "Thanks." I tossed them in the drawer of the telephone stand. What was the use of opening them? They were from people who had heard about Uncle Otto and the money, and who wanted to sell me something.

  "That fellow's still here," Patrolman Gamelsfelder said sourly. "I think he's sick."

  "Too bad." I tried to close the door.

  "Anyway, he says to tell Cuddles that Tinker is here."

  I grabbed the door. "Tell Cud. . ."

  "That's what he said." Gamelsfelder saw that that hit me, and it pleased him. For the first time he smiled.

  "What—what's his name?"

  "Winston McNeely McGhee," said Officer Gamelsfelder happily, "or anyway that's what he told me, Mr. Binns."

  I said, "Send the son of a—Send the fellow in," I said, and jumped to get the baby away from the ashtray where Margery had left a cigarette burning. Winnie McGhee—it was all I needed to finish off my day.

  He came in holding his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. He was never what you'd call healthy-looking, even when Margery stood me up at the altar in order to elope with him. It was his frail, poetic charm, and maybe he still had that, and maybe he didn't, but the way he looked to me, he was sick, all right. He looked like he weighed a fast hundred pounds not counting the head; the head looked like a balloon. He moaned, "Hello, Harlan, age thirty-one, five-eleven, one seventy-three. You got an acetylsalicylic acid tablet?"

  I said, "What?" But he didn't get a chance to answer right away because there was a flutter and a scurry from the expansion attic and Margery appeared at the head of the stairs. "I thought—" she began wildly, and then she saw that her wildest thought was true. "You!" She betrayed pure panic—fussi
ng with her hair with one hand and smoothing her Bermuda shorts with the other, simultaneously trying to wiggle, no-hands, out of the sloppy old kitchen apron that had been good enough for me.

  McGhee said pallidly, "Hello. Please, don't you have an acetylsalicylic acid tablet?"

  "I don't know what it is," I said simply.

  Margery chuckled ruefully. "Ah, Harlan, Harlan," she said with fond tolerance, beaming lovingly at me as she came down the stairs. It was enough to turn the stomach of a cat.

  "You forget, Winnie. Harlan doesn't know much chemistry. Won't you find him an aspirin, Harlan? That's all he wants."

  "Thanks," said Winnie with a grateful sigh, massaging his temples.

  I went and got him an aspirin. I thought of adding a little mixer to the glass of water that went with it, but there wasn't anything in the medicine chest that looked right, and besides it's against the law. I don't mind admitting it, I never liked Winnie McGhee, and it isn't just because he swiped my bride from me. Well, she smartened up after six months, and then, when she turned up with an annulment and sincere repentance—well, I've never regretted marrying her. Or anyway, not much. But you can't expect me to like McGhee. My heavens, if I'd never seen the man before I'd hate his little purple guts on first contact, because he looks like a poet and talks like a scientist and acts like a jerk.

  I started back to the living room and yelled: "The baby!"

  Margery turned away from simpering at her former husband and sprang for the puppy's dish. She got it away from the baby, but not quite full. There was a good baby-sized mouthful of mixed milk and dog-biscuit that she had to excavate for, and naturally the baby had his way of counter-attacking forthat.

  "No bite!" she yelled, pulling her finger out of his mouth and putting it in hers. Then she smiled sweetly. "Isn't he a darling, Winnie? He's got his daddy's nose, of course. But don't you think he has my eyes?"

  "He'll have your fingers too, if you don't keep them out of his mouth," I told her.