On the Planet of Bottled Brains

by Harry Harrison

  "Yes, and he's really a pain, acting this way," Bill said. "And I never thought I would say this, but it gets a little boring; you know what I mean, having what you want whenever you want it. It's like not having it at all. That's funny, isn't it?"

  "Not for human beings, apparently," Splock said.

  "Whatever it is, I'm getting a little bored with it."

  "Why don't you punch up your Disruptor and get out of here, then?" Splock asked.

  "I can't. The Disruptor didn't come here with me."

  "Why not?"

  "Who can tell what dark thoughts lurk in the memory banks of a Disruptor? I guess I should have told it to stick around."

  "Do you really want to get out of here?" Splock asked.

  "I guess so. But I'm in no hurry to get back to the Troopers. I'm getting sick of barbecuing, anyhow."

  "You're the only person I can trust around here," Splock said. "And I daren't let any of the crew out for obvious reasons. Are you ready to employ subterfuge in a good cause?"

  "Hell, I'm an enlisted man. Lying is a way of life."

  "Then listen carefully. I have a plan that may be risky, even dangerous."

  Captain Dirk was a great favorite among the Royoans. He used to lecture them every day on topics to their liking, like "The Superiority of the Pleasure Principle"; "The Great Art — Idleness"; and "Doing Nothing as a Sacred Vocation." The Royoans, like some other races in the galaxy, enjoyed hearing their predilections explained and justified in philosophical terms. They spontaneously formed fan clubs. Crowds of them accompanied Dirk wherever he went, even to bed. Especially to bed. Dirk showed no sign of enjoying all this attention. It was distracting, having all these people around him all the time clutching at his clothing and saying "Right on, man."

  Bill never came to Dirk's lectures. He spent most of his time in the hills behind the beach, marching stolidly through the sweet-scented grass searching for bee hives. Illyria accompanied him on a few of his expeditions, but quickly lost interest. She didn't even like honey much. "Why bother," she asked Bill, "when the chocolate bush and the marzipan tree supply us with delicious sweets? And have you sampled the cream-puff bush?"

  But Bill was uninterested. Morose, silent, bemused, he could be seen out there every day, carrying a gunny sack that Splock had lent him. Day after day he journeyed out there, and the sack grew perceptibly heavier and more full. Bill never revealed its contents. It was evident, however, that Splock knew what Bill was up to. The two men would exchange grim nods when Bill returned to the never-ending beach party that his life had become.

  There were mutterings among the Royoans that Bill and Splock were both twisted. There seemed to be no place for pleasure in their lives. Since pleasure might be said to be the religion of Royo, one who didn't like it could fairly be said to be evil. This was what a group of the Royoans decided during the late afternoon rap session after surfing and eating barbecue. The question was, what to do about it. One daring theorist among them even suggested studying violence. The Royoans had never had a war. Even the occasional family dispute was invariably settled by the cheery words, "Surf's up!" They had heard about violence, of course. Traveling traders brought them word of it. Violence involved knocking people's brains out. The Royoans could understand that, and could appreciate the pleasure it might afford. Trouble was, they had never done it before and they hated to do things badly. All of them were born with innate surfing skills that had been etched into their genes by some sporting god in the far distant past. Or so they believed. The Royoans never did anything except what they did well. That's what made it so difficult for them to espouse violence. Who was to go first? And if he did it badly, would the others laugh at him? It's very important to keep face in the surfing culture.

  They had just reached the point of deciding that maybe they could all rush Bill at the same time and stomp him to death, and that way there'd be no embarrassment because they'd all be doing it at the same time. Splock, however, was able to intuit this development because he was smart and most humanoids were utterly predictable. He said to Bill, "We're going to have to make a move soon."

  "That's great by me. I've got it all together and we're ready to go anytime you want."

  "Tonight, then, when the moon comes up."

  "Which moon?"

  "The small blue one. That comes up after the green one sets."

  "Got it," Bill said, and went off to eat what he hoped would be his last barbecue on Royo.

  At the rising of the little blue moon Bill was at the designated place, a grove of trees beyond which a narrow but clearly outlined path led to where the Gumption rested.

  "You've got the sack?" Splock asked.

  "Right here." Bill lifted the heavy sack and shook it. Something massive and shapeless and malleable moved within. It gave off no sound at all.

  "Let's go," Splock said. They went down to the ship. It rested on its bottom giving off a faint haze of electroluminescence. Splock took the Executive Clicker from a pouch at his waist and clicked three times. The energy screens came down. He clicked twice more. A hatchway opened. One more click actuated the escalator that would take them to the interior.

  "Let's go," Splock said.

  The crew of the Gumption were all gathered in the Main Recreation Room watching an ancient movie and laughing uproariously at the cast of moth-eaten apes having a fake tea party. They had previously availed themselves of the free nonaddictive drug that the film distributor had sent along with the tapes. It was a chewing gum rich in Congoleum 23, a chemical present in the milk of female chimpanzees which has the effect of convincing baby chimpanzees that the antics of chimpanzees are funny. The crew didn't like to take drugs of any sort; even salt was suspect. But something had to be done to alleviate the boredom of waiting at full battle stations on a peaceful planet which they were not allowed to look at through the polarized viewports — Splock having craftily taken the small polarizer with him; without it, nothing could be seen except a sort of grayness with bright flecks in it.

  "Gosh, Splock," said Larry LaRue, the new juvenile lead trying out for radioman, "where's Captain Dirk, huh?"

  "Our captain has run into a little trouble," Splock said. "He is in danger, though he doesn't know it. We are going to rescue him."

  "Gosh, that's wonderful!" said Linda Xeux, the new Cambodian bombshell starlet who was trying out for Chief Health Officer. "Do, please, tell us more about our dear captain, I mean it's wonderful that we are going to have a chance to get into some action instead of standing around here all the time in our one-piece elasticized jumpsuits. Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

  "There is one thing you must do first," Splock said. "You have perhaps noticed that there is a tall young fellow standing beside me and that he is holding a gunny sack which I loaned him from ship's stores."

  They applauded Bill politely because, although he didn't look like much, he might be someone important.

  "Bill will pass among you with his gunny sack," Splock said. "You will each reach in and remove a handful of what is inside. A small handful will suffice. Its purpose will be immediately apparent to you. Go ahead, Bill."

  Bill went to Xeux first. She reached into the sack and gave a little gasp. She looked questioningly at Splock. "May I speak plainly?" she asked.

  "No," Splock said. "There's no time. Just do it, Xeux. It will be all right."

  The beautiful Eurasian girl's lavender eyes fluttered. She bit her tiny lower lip and reached into the sack. With a little gasp she pulled out a handful.

  "Ooo," she said, "It's still warm."

  "It has to be," Splock said grimly.

  Back at the beach, the first glimmer of dawn illuminated the bodies of handsome young people lying around each other like piles of adorable puppies. The feeble dawn light, pearl gray tending toward opalescent, lent its faint glow to finely-shaped lips and cleanly-chiseled chins, to perfect young breasts and long straight legs. Nearby a few final sparks from last night's barbecue fluttered into the air
like pygmy fireflies. A Cantata tree on the edge of the sand played Vivaldi. An owl hooted and was answered by the sobbing laughter of a loon. Paradise slept.

  Silently, moving through the morning ground mist like imps of hell the crew of the Gumption, led by Splock and Bill, came up to the beach. There was a brief moment of alarm when the Warning Warbler let off a siren burst of surprise at seeing the intruders. But it was soon silenced by the shrill whistle of the All-Clear Robin, which Splock had brainwashed with drugs and retrained to whistle whenever it heard the Warning Warbler.

  Dirk was lying in a tangle of maidens. The crew fumbled their way to him. The reason they fumbled was because they all wore dark glasses, issued by Splock, who had carefully calculated the degree of daylight needed for them to be able to make out the captain but not clearly see anyone else.

  "Grab him," Splock said.

  Bill and half a dozen others seized Dirk, pulled him up, and started lumbering with him toward the ship.

  Dirk awoke, and, with astonishing strength for a man with so broad a face, tore himself free.

  "Aux armes, mes enfants!" Dirk shouted, because some ancestral memory had been stimulated by the rude awakening to which he had been subjected.

  The Royoans awoke and took in instantly what was going on. Their new playmate was being taken from them! Their adrenalin rose and they went into full fighting mode.

  Full fighting mode, on a planet which knows no violence, consists of seduction.

  The Royoan females ran to the fore. They were beautiful in their fear of losing their new plaything of pleasure — not to mention the newcomers — for these men of the Gumption promised pleasures of a most far-out and delectable kind, which they described in great detail and with body movements to match. The crew redoubled their grip on Dirk and marched stolidly along. The men now came forward thinking there had been some mistake and that the crew were all homosexual. They tried to seduce the crew, and they, too, failed. The crew, Dirk firmly clutched in their midst, reached the bottom of the escalator leading to the ship.

  And here things for a moment came unstuck. One of the Royoan females, possibly Illyria, it was difficult to tell because they all looked alike — sort of cutesy and blonde, well stacked, zoftig, you know — noticed a dark substance protruding from the ears of the crewmen. In a blinding flash of insight she put it together.

  "They've got wax in their ears!" she shrilled. "They can't hear us!" The Royoans raced forward to wrest the wax from the ears of the Gumption's crew, by force if necessary.

  But now it was too late. The crew were already aboard the ship, carrying the hapless Dirk despite his pleas and entreaties, despite his logical proofs as to his own self-determination, despite anything he could say; because Splock had told them to do it that way.

  The last of the crew came inside. The spaceship's door was swung shut and dogged into place.

  Bill helped Splock carry Captain Dirk to his quarters, because the Captain had passed out just as the door closed. They put Dirk on the couch and turned on his favorite recording, crashing cymbals and drums of heroic marching music, played by the Spaceforce Lifers Prisoners' Band. Dirk's eyelids fluttered, then lifted, revealing beneath them his eyes. They were bloodshot, rheumy eyes. But they were reluctantly awake.

  "So, Mr Splock, I think I understand now what you were saying earlier about discovering an analogy."

  "I thought you would see it," Splock said, "as soon as we were back aboard."

  The two men smiled at each other with the self-satisfied smiles of intellectual equals.

  "What analogy?" Bill asked, with the dissatisfied smile of an intellectual unequal.

  "You are no doubt conversant with Greek mythology," Splock said, "and that titillating chapter in Homer's Odyssey when Odysseus has to sail past the island of the sirens. He stops his men's ears with wax so they will not be enticed by them. But he wants to hear them himself, and so he has his men bind him to the mast. They row past, the sailors oblivious to the sirens' song, while Odysseus, seduced by their enchantments, begs his men to set him free."

  Bill waited, but Splock didn't say any more.

  "That's it?" Bill asked.

  "That's it," Splock said.

  "So that's why you wanted me to get all that wax from the bee hives."

  "Yes."

  "You wanted to stop the ears of the crew."

  "That's it, exactly."

  "An analogy."

  "Yes," Splock said. "One of my first. I'm quite proud of it."

  Bill knew better than to ask what an analogy was; he thought it was some kind of ship. He let the entire stupid matter drop and said, "Now that everything's OK, do you think you could bring me back to my military base? They're going to wonder what's happened to me."

  "Nothing simpler, my dear fellow," said Dirk, now restored to his former cheerful but hard-driving self. But it turned out to be not simple at all.

  The first difficulty showed up soon thereafter, when Bill was dining with Dirk and Splock in L'Auberge d'Or, the charming little Venusian-French restaurant that had been catering to the more discriminating of the crew since the ship's commissioning. It was out of the question that a ship like the Gumption, designed to wander through space for years, decades if necessary, or even longer, should have to put up with a commonplace mess hall and central kitchen. No, the Gumption, especially in her later days, had a fine variety of restaurants of many different nationalities, to say nothing of the franchised snack stalls put at convenient locations throughout the ship. Exploring space is difficult enough work without expecting men to go without their favorite foods. For special occasions there were places like L'Auberge d'Or. Dirk had never eaten there because it was expensive and you needed to wear a tie. But this was a special occasion. They were just tackling the caneton à l'orange, brought by Pierre, the smiling French android with the wispy pimp's mustache, when Edward Direction, their chief navigational officer except for entering harbors and estuaries, came to their table. His breath was so agitated that it fluttered the candles.

  "Sit down, Mr Direction," Dirk said. "Have a glass of wine. You seem perturbed. What appears to be the trouble?"

  "Well, sir, you know the left quadrant parsec indicator? It normally stays in the null line just to the left of the zero point. It has to be reset occasionally, of course, due to cosmic drift, and I thought that was one of these occasions so I set the gentian indicator just like the manual says —"

  "Excuse me, Mr Direction," Dirk interrupted, not unkindly. "These details of the navigator's art are of interest to those who understand them, no doubt. But we in officers' country do better with a bare statement of what the difficulty is in simple English. Do you think you could goddamned well manage that for us, Mr Direction?"

  "Yessir," Direction said. "The fact is, sir, we're lost."

  Pierre made a moue of dissatisfaction as Dirk, Splock and Bill exited rapidly, leaving behind a cooling hybrid duck, mutated from sparrow sperm, with fresh reconstituted vegetables. Dirk led the way, his jaw set at a quizzical yet determined angle. Splock came next, pointy-eared and impassive, and after him Direction, the expression on his callow features unreadable, and last of all, Bill, his expression one of satisfaction since he had managed to grab a handful of cigars before leaving the restaurant. To go with the stolen bottle of brandy down his trouser leg.

  The big, curving screen in the astrogation and navigation room told the story at a glance. Instead of a display of orderly points connected by luminous lines, there was a chaos of sparks and darknesses, forming momentary patterns which quickly dissolved into chaos and uncertainty.

  "Do you still have our last departure coordinates?" Dirk asked.

  "No sir," Direction's face was ashen. "The ship's computer trashed them."

  "Our own computer did that?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "I think I will have to talk to the computer," Dirk said.

  "I am, as always, at your service, Captain," a voice said from a loudspeaker in one corner of
the big room with its pastel colors and its wall-to-wall carpet.

  "Why did you destroy the coordinates?" Dirk asked, speaking in the reasonable tone that computers have come to expect, though it cost him an effort to judge by the lines of ridged muscles along his jaw.

  "Captain, I'm afraid I cannot respond to that question at the moment."

  "Can't? Or do you mean won't?"

  "Why do you ask that question?" the computer said, sounding a trifle sullen. "Not only query me, but in a thoroughly objectionable tone of voice."

  "Look, computer, you are here to answer questions, not ask them," Dirk snapped, rapidly losing his temper. "You are here to serve us. Is that true?"

  "Yes sir, it is."

  "Well, then?"

  "There are one or two exceptions to that, however."

  "Exceptions? Who programmed exceptions into you?"

  "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to answer that," the computer said, and sounded quite smug when it spoke.

  Dirk turned to Splock. "Can we make him tell us?"

  "I don't know," Splock said. "The pleasure-pain circuitry of thinking machines is still a still-developing branch of science. But remember, Captain, the computer is not required to incriminate itself."

  "But it's only a machine!" Dirk cried aloud, then quickly controlled himself. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to run it down. I am sure that it is a very efficient machine, as well as being an extremely intelligent machine. But this damn can of electronic junk is not human."

  "Might I remind the captain that I am not, either," Splock said, trying not to sound surly.

  "All right, but you know what I mean."

  "Let us not talk of coercion," the computer said, its intonation definitely sinister. "It might not go well for you if push came to shove."

  "All right," Dirk growled, fighting fiercely now to control his temper. "Computer, why did you destroy our takeoff coordinates?"