Turn Left at Thursday (1961) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  • • • •

  5

  Now, this is how it was, an allegory or parable. Make a chemical preparation, you see? Take hydrogen and take oxygen--very pure in both cases--blend them and strike a spark. Nothing happens. They do not burn!

  It is true, though you may not believe me.

  But with something added, yes, they burn. For instance let the spark be a common match, with so tiny you can hardly detect it, a quarter-droplet of water bonded into its substance--Yes, with the water they will burn--more than burn--kerblam, the hydrogen and oxygen fiercely unite. Water, it is the catalyst which makes it go.

  Similarly, I reflected (unhearing the chatter of Mr. Hagsworth), it is a catalyst which is needed on Earth, and this catalyst I have made, my cosmetic appliance, my bomb. The chemicals were stewing together nicely. There was a ferment of suspicion in Russia, of fear in America, of jealousy in France where I had made the ship land. Oh, they were jumpy now! I could feel forces building around me; even the driver of the cab, half-watching the crowded streets, half listening to the hysterical cries of his little radio. To the Mayflower, hurrying. All the while the city was getting excited around us. That was the ferment, end by my watch the catalyst was quite near.

  'Wait,' said Mr. Hagsworth pleading, in the lobby, 'come have a drink, Smith.'

  'I don't drink.'

  'I forgot,' he apologized. 'Well, would you like to sit for a moment in the bar with me? I'd like to talk to you. This is all happening too fast'

  'Come along to my room,' I said, not wanting him, no, but what harm could he do? And I did not want to be away from my purple armchair, not at all.

  So up we go and there is still time, I am glad. Enough time. The elevator could have stuck, my door could have somehow been locked against me, by error I could have gone to the wrong floor--no, everything was right. We were there and there was time.

  • • • •

  I excused myself a moment (though it could have been forever) and walked into the inner room of this suite. Yes, it was there, ready. It squatted purple, and no human would think to look at it that it was anything but an armchair, but it was much more and if I wished I could go to it,--z-z-z-z-zit, I would be gone.

  A man spoke.

  I turned, looking. Out of the door to the tiled room spoke to me a man, smiling, red-faced, in blue coveralls. Well. For a moment I felt alarm. (I remembered, e.g., what I had left bound in the closet.) But on this man's face was only smile and he said with apology: 'Oh, hello, sir. Sorry. But we had a complaint from the floor below, plumbing leak. I've got it nearly fixed.'

  Oh, all right. I shrugged for him and went back to Air. Hagsworth. In my mind had been--well, I do not know what had been in my mind. Maybe z-z-z-z-zit to the George V and telephone Duplessin to make sure they would not allow Russians or Americans near the ship, no, not if the ambassadors made of his life a living hell. Maybe to Metropole to phone Tadjensevitch (not the Marshal, he would not speak on telephone to me) to urge him also on. Maybe farther, yes.

  But I went back to Mr. Hagsworth. It was not needed, really it was not.

  It was only insurance, in the event that somehow my careful plans went wrong, I wished to be there until the very end. Or nearly. But I need not have done it.

  But I did. Z-z-z-z-zit and I could have been away, but I stayed, very foolish, but I did.

  • • • •

  Mr. Hagsworth was on telephone, his eyes bright and angry, I thought I knew what he was hearing. I listened to hear if there were, perhaps, muffled kickings, maybe groans, from a closet, but there were none; hard as it was, I had tied well, surely. And then Mr. Hagsworth looked up.

  He said, bleak: 'I have news, Smith. It's started.'

  'Started?'

  'Oh,' he said without patience, 'you know what I'm talking about, Smith.

  The trouble's started. These Aldebaranians of yours, they've stirred up a hornet's nest, and now the stinging has begun. I just talked to the White House. There's a definite report of a nuclear explosion in the Mojave desert.'

  'No!'

  'Yes,' he said, nodding, 'there is no doubt. It can't be anything but a Russian missile, though their aim is amazingly bad. Can it?'

  'What else possibly?' I asked with logic. 'How terrible! And I suppose you have retaliated, hey? Sent a flight of missiles to Moscow?'

  'Of course. What else could we do?'

  He had put his finger on it, yes, he was right, I had computed it myself. 'Nothing,' I said and wrung his hand, 'and may the best country win.'

  'Or planet,' he said, nodding.

  'Planet?' I let go his hand. I looked. I waited. It was a time for astonishment, I did not speak.

  Mr. Hagsworth said, speaking very slow, 'Smith, or maybe I ought to say "Plinglot", that's what I wanted to talk to you about.'

  'Talk,' I invited.

  Outside there was sudden shouting. 'They've heard about the bomb,'

  conjectured Mr. Hagsworth, but he paid no more attention. He said: 'In school, Plinglot, I knew a Fat Boy.' He said: 'He always got his way.

  Everybody was afraid of him. But he never fought, he only divided others, do you see, and got them to fight each other.'

  I stood tall--yes, and brave! I dare use that word "brave", it applies.

  One would think that it would be like a human to say he is brave before a blinded fluttering moth, 'brave' where there is no danger to be brave against; but though this was a human only, in that room I felt danger.

  Incredible, but it was so and I did not wish it.

  I said, 'What are you talking about, Mr. Hagsworth?'

  'An idea I had,' he said softly with a face like death. 'About a murderer. Maybe he comes from another planet and, for reasons of his own, wants to destroy our planet. Maybe this isn't the first one--he might have stopped, for example, at Aldebaran.'

  'I do not want to hear this,' I said, with truth.

  But he did not stop, he said: 'We human beings have faults, Plinglot, and an outsider with brains and a lot of special knowledge--say, the kind of knowledge that could get a file folder into our records, in spite of all our security precautions--such an outsider might use our faults to destroy us.

  Senate Committee hearings--why, some of them have been a joke for years, and not a very funny one. Characters have been destroyed, policies have been wrecked--why shouldn't a war be started? Because politicians can be relied on to act in a certain way. And maybe this outsider, having watched and studied us, knew something about Russian weaknesses too, and played on them in the same way. Do you see how easy it would be?'

  'Easy?' I cried, offended.

  'For someone with very special talents and ability,' he assured me.

  'For a Fat Boy. Especially for a Fat Boy who can go faster than any human can follow from here to Moscow, Moscow to Paris, Paris to the Mojave, Mojave to--where? Somewhere near Mars, let's say at a guess. For such a person, wouldn't it, Plinglot, be easy?'

  I reeled, I reeled; but these monkey tricks, they could not matter. I had planned too carefully for that, only how did they know?

  'Excuse me,' I said softly, 'one moment,' and turned again to the room with the armchair, I felt I had made a mistake. But what mistake could matter, I thought, when there was the armchair and, of course, z-z-z-z-zit.

  But that was a mistake also.

  The man in blue coveralls, he stood in the door but not smiling, he held in his hand what I knew instantly was a gun.

  The armchair was there, yes, but in it was of all strange unaccountable people this chambermaid, who should have been bounded in closet, and she too had a gun.

  'Miss Gonzalez,' introduced Hagsworth politely, 'and Mr. Hechtmeyer.

  They are--well, G-men, though, as you can see, Miss Gonzalez is not a man. But she had something remarkable to tell us about you, Plinglot, when Mr. Hechtmeyer released her. She said that you seemed to have another shape when she saw you last. The shape of a sort of green-skinned octopus with bright red eyes; ridiculous, isn't i
t? Or is it, Plinglot?'

  Ruses were past, it was a time for candid. I said--I said, 'Like this?'

  terribly, and I went to natural form.

  Oh, what white faces! Oh, what horror! It was remarkable, really, that they did not turn and run. For that is Secret Weapon No. 1, for us of Tau Ceti on sanitation work; for our working clothes we assume the shape of those about us certainly, but in case of danger we have merely to resume our own. In all Galaxy (I do not know about Andromeda) there is no shape so fierce. Seven terrible arms. Fourteen piercing scarlet eyes. Teeth like Hessian bayonets; I ask you, would you not run?

  But they did not. Outside a siren began to scream.

  • • • •

  6

  I cried: 'Air attack!' It was fearful, the siren warned of atomic warheads on their way and this human woman, this Gonzalez, sat in my chair with pointing gun. 'Go away,' I cried, 'get out,' and rushed upon her, but she did not move. 'Please?' I said thickly among my long teeth, but what was the use, she would not do it!

  They paled, they trembled, but they stayed; well, I would have paled and trembled myself if it had been a Tau Cetan trait, instead I merely went limp. Terror was not only on one side in that room, I confess it. 'Pease,' I begged, 'I must go, it is the end of life on this planet and I do not wish to be here!'

  'You don't have a choice,' said Mr. Hagsworth, his face like steel.

  'Gentlemen!' he called. 'Come in!' And through the door came several persons, some soldiers and some who were not. I looked with all my eyes; I could not have been more astonished. For there was--yes, Senator Schnell, gold tooth covered, face without smile; Senator Loveless, white hair waving; and--oh, there was more.

  I could scarcely believe.

  Feeble, slow humans! They had mere atmosphere craft mostly but here, eight thousand miles from where he had been eighteen hours before, yes, Comrade Tadjensevitch, the old man; and M. Duplessin, sadly meeting my eyes. It could not be, almost I forgot the screaming siren and the fear.

  'These gentlemen,' said Hagsworth with politeness, 'also would like to talk to you, Mr. Smith.'

  'Arakelian,' grunted the old man.

  'Monsieur Laplant,' corrected Duplessin.

  'Or,' said Hagsworth, 'should we all call you by your right name, Plinglot?'

  Outside the siren screamed, I could not move.

  Senator Schnell came to speak: 'Mr. Smith,' he said, 'or, I should say, Plinglot, we would like an explanation. Or account.'

  'Please let me go!' I cried.

  'Where?' demanded old Tadjensevitch. 'To Mars, Hero of Soviet Labour? Or farther this time?'

  'The bombs,' I cried. 'Let me go! What about Hero of Soviet Labour?'

  The old man sighed: 'The decoration Comrade Party Secretary gave you, it contains a microwave transmitter, very good. One of our sputniki now needs new parts.'

  'You suspected me?' I cried, out of fear and astonishment.

  'Of course the Russians suspected you, Plinglot,' Hagsworth scolded mildly. 'We all did, even we Americans--and we are not, you know, a suspicious race. 'No,' he added thoughtfully, as though there were no bombs to fall, 'our national characteristics are ... what? The conventional caricatures--the publicity hound, the pork-barrel senator, the cut-throat businessman? Would you say that was a fair picture, Mr. Smith?'

  ' I Plinglot!'

  'Yes, of course. Sorry. But that must be what you thought, because those are the stereotypes you acted on, and maybe they're true enough--

  most of the time. Too much of the time. But not all the time, Plinglot!'

  I fell to the floor, perspiring a terrible smell, it is how we faint, so to speak. It was death, it was the end, and this man was bullying me without fear.

  'The Fat Boy,' said Mr. Hagsworth softly, 'was strong. He could have whipped most of us. But in my last term he got licked. Guile and bluff--

  when at last the bluff was called he gave up. He was a coward.'

  'I give up, Mr. Hagsworth,' I wailed, 'only let me go away from the bombs!'

  'I know you do,' he nodded, "what else? And--what, the bombs ?

  There are no bombs. Look out the window.'

  In seconds I pulled myself together, no one spoke. I went to window.

  Cruising up and down outside a white truck, red cross, painted with word Ambulance, siren going. Only that. No air raid warning. Only ambulance.

  'Did you think,' scolded Hagsworth with voice angry now, 'that we would let you bluff us? There's an old maxim--"Give him enough rope"--we gave it to you; and we added a little. You see, we didn'tknow you came from a race of cowards.'

  'I Plinglot!' I sobbed through all my teeth. 'I am not a coward. I even tied this human woman here, ask her! It was brave, even Mother could not have done more! Why, I sector warden of this whole quadrant of the very Galaxy, indeed, to keep the peace!'

  'That much we know--and we know why,' nodded Mr. Hagsworth,

  'because you're afraid; but we needed to know more. Well, now we do; and once M. Duplessin's associates get a better means of communication with the little Aldebaranians, I expect we'll know still more. It will be very helpful knowledge,' he added in thought.

  It was all, it was the end. I said sadly: 'If only Great Mother could know Plinglot did his best! If only she could learn what strange people live here, who, I cannot understand.'

  'Oh,' said Mr. Hagsworth, gently, 'We'll tell her for you, Plinglot,' he said, 'very soon, I think.'